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The Higher Criticism 
cross-examined 



The Higher Criticism 
Cross-Examined 

Hn appeal anb a UWarnins 



BY 

Frederick Davis Storey 



PROVE ALL THINGS— St. Paul 



PHILADELPHIA 

Gibe <Srtffitb & ttowlanD press 

M C M V 



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LIBRARY of )ONG«£SS 

AUG 10 1905 

Oooyriijni entry 
LASS O. AA& «w 

copy b> 



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Copyright 1905 by the 
American Baptist Publication Society 

Published August, 1905 



from tbe Society's own press 



.. ttO: 

MY WIFE 



WHO HAS EVER BEEN TO ME 

A WISE COUNSELOR 

AN INCARNATE CONSCIENCE 

AND AN UNFAILING INSPIRATION 



PREFACE 



This book is precisely what it purports to be — 
an appeal to ordinary Christians by one of them 
from their own standpoint, namely, that of be- 
lievers in the Lord Jesus Christ as the Son of God 
and the Saviour of the world, and in the Hebrew 
and Christian Scriptures as the only authoritative 
record of the revelation of God to men. The 
writer expressly disavows any pretensions to schol- 
arship, or to the possession of any knowledge as 
an expert in any department of biblical criticism. 
He does not claim to meet the critics on their own 
ground ; nor does he hope to present any consid- 
erations which they will deem worthy of notice. 
His aim is a much more modest one — simply to 
call the attention of Christians of thoughtful mind 
to the results which, in his judgment, must neces- 
sarily follow the acceptance of critical theories as 
to the nature of the only account of the facts upon 
which our faith is based, and to the kind of reasons 
adduced by the critics in support of a position 
which seems to him absolutely to preclude the 
possibility of any revelation at all. 

For a long time past he had been perplexed and 

7 



PREFACE 

oppressed by the open skepticism and the confi- 
dent tone of the " Christian critics " in their treat- 
ment of the foundations of the Christian faith. A 
year or two since, a serious accident confined him 
to his home for many months. This period of 
enforced inaction he occupied in a careful and 
painstaking examination of the critical case, so far 
as the same had been done into English. The 
following pages set forth the impressions thereby 
made upon his mind ; and as such he offers them 
for the consideration of those believers who are 
still willing to follow the light of revelation, rather 
than the ignis fatuus of speculative criticism. 

The writer's thanks are due to several friends : 
To the Rev. G. H. Charles, of Philadelphia, Pa., 
the Rev. D. D. Munro, of East Orange, N. J., and 
the Rev. C. W. Skemp, of Eccles, Manchester, for 
many years secretary of Rawdon College, England, 
who have kindly read and commented on his man- 
uscript ; and to Mr. B. H. Doane, of the New 
York bar, for much valuable assistance in the way 
of suggestion during the progress of the work. 

He would especially express his obligations to 
his friend, the Rev. M. H. Pogson, d. d., of New 
York, a stalwart defender of the old faith, but for 
whose warm encouragement and dogged insistence 
this book, such as it is, would never have been 
completed. F D. S. 

The Bronx, N. Y., June, 1905. 

8 



TABLE OF CONTENTS 

Chapter Page 

I. Criticism and the Church n 

II. Criticism in the Open 23 

III. The Old Belief 37 

IV. The Old Book 47 

V. The New History 63 

VI. The Mutilated Book 77 

VII. The Nature of the Evidence 91 

VIII. Internal Evidence 105 

IX. The Historical Evidences 119 

X. The Unequal Balances 135 

9 



TABLE OF CONTENTS 
Chapter Page 

XL The Argument from Silence 153 

XII. The Argument from Non-observance . . .165 

XIII. The External Evidences : Babylonian . .177 

XIV. The External Evidences : Egyptian . . .193 
XV. The Question of Morals 207 

XVI. The Practical Outcome 223 

XVII. Christ versus Criticism 241 



10 



CRITICISM AND THE CHURCH 



Inspirer of the ancient seers 

Who wrote from thee the sacred page, 
The same through all succeeding years, 

To us in our degenerate age 
The spirit of thy word impart, 
And breathe the life into our heart. 

While now thine oracles we read 

With earnest prayer and strong desire, 

O let thy Spirit from thee proceed, 
Our souls to awaken and inspire; 

Our weakness help, our darkness chase, 

And guide us by the light of grace. 

Whene' er in error' s paths we rove, 
The living God through sin forsake, 

Our conscience by thy word reprove. 
Convince and bring the wanderers back, 

Deep wounded by thy Spirit' s sword, 

And then by Gilead' s balm restored. 

The sacred lessons of thy grace, 

Transmitted through thy word, repeat, 

And train us up in all thy ways, 
To make us in thy will complete, 

To teach, convince, correct, reprove, 

And build us up in holiest love. 

— Charles Wesley. 



CRITICISM AND THE CHURCH 

Seemeth it a small matter unto you to have eaten up the 
good pasture, but you must tread down with your feet the 
residue of your pastures ? and to have drunk of the deep 
waters, but you must foul the residue with your feet ? 

— Ezekiel. 

The success which has in recent years attended 
the introduction and propagation of that system 
of biblical exposition known as the " higher criti- 
cism," is to many Christians one of the saddest 
and most portentous signs of the times. Its aims 
are so frankly destructive of every element of the 
supernatural in religion, its methods and many of 
its exponents are so lacking in common respect 
for a book which has for long ages past been held 
in the highest reverence by Jew and Christian alike, 
and its logical consequences are so wide-reaching 
and attack at so many vital points the authority 
of the Bible and the foundations of the Christian 
system, nay, the very possibility of revelation itself, 
that one is simply amazed at the indifferent atti- 
tude, if indeed one may not call it acquiescent, of 
the church of Christ toward its theories and its 
other extravagancies. 

13 



THE HIGHER CRITICISM CROSS-EXAMINED 

Assaults upon the Bible are not new. When- 
ever an authentic word of God has been promul- 
gated, the sons of Jehudi with their mutilating 
penknives have not been far distant. Denials of 
supernatural intervention in human affairs, of a 
divinely guided and controlled history, and of the 
self-revelation of God to men are not confined to 
the present age. Instances may be found in the 
first century, as in the twentieth ; and when they 
proceed from the lips of avowed skeptics, men who 
sit in the seat of the scornful, they occasion no 
surprise. It is just what might be expected. But 
it is matter of wonder to find essentially anti- 
Christian attacks upon the trustworthiness, and 
even upon the common honesty, of the word of 
God, aided and abetted by priests of a great his- 
toric church, who by their ordination vows are 
committed to an unfeigned belief in all the canon- 
ical Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments, 
and, by subscription to its articles, are pledged to 
their defense as the written word of God. And 
the same wonder may be expressed in regard to 
an important section of the ministry in the other 
great evangelical denominations. 

In view of this aspect of the case, the general 
body of believers might be warranted in the charge 
that the Christian faith is being wounded in the * 
house of its friends. For, although these Chris- 
tian critics may claim, after all their dissections 

14 



CRITICISM AND THE CHURCH 



and demolitions, to preserve unimpaired their rev- 
erence for God's word and their loyalty to its 
authority, it is difficult to see how they can do it ; 
and the plain man with his contempt for hairsplit- 
ting, demands "straight talk," and is apt to char- 
acterize by a harsh name ambiguities and mental 
reservations, no matter how dexterous in statement 
or fair-seeming in intention they may be. A plain 
" Yes," or a plain " No," he understands ; but a 
" Yes-and-no " deliverance, when once he grasps its 
bearings, will meet with scant courtesy and short 
shrift at his hands. He is more than likely to wash 
his hands of the whole matter as something too 
dubious for him to concern himself about. 

It must be admitted that the astonishing vogue 
of the higher criticism, and the supine acceptance 
by the Protestant Christian world of its subversive 
dogmas, seem to point to a precedent condition of 
decadent spiritual life in the church. When an 
organism is in a state of robust health, and its 
vital processes are in lively and vigorous exercise, 
there is a strong probability that the intrusion of 
any virus into the system will be rendered innocu- 
ous by the operation of the resistive forces uniting 
to repel the invader ; while the same organism in 
a low and impaired condition, and with the pulses 
of life beating feebly, will fall an easy prey to the 
inroads of disease. A church with a vivid appre- 
hension of spiritual truth and an experimental 

i5 



THE HIGHER CRITICISM CROSS-EXAMINED 

knowledge of divine things, verified in all the 
vicissitudes of life by the continuing testimony of 
the abiding Spirit, possesses an antiseptic against 
all poisons. It has an infallible touchstone by 
which to discern in any new presentation its har- 
mony with saving truth, or the reverse. It says : 
" To the law and to the testimony, if they speak 
not according to this word, it is because they have 
no light in them " ; and it would on the instant 
meet the masked approaches of infidelity, under 
whatever guise, with the rebuke : " Get thee behind 
me, Satan, thou art an offense unto me, for thou 
savorest not the things that be of God, but the 
things that be of men." While to the same 
church, honeycombed with worldliness and stupe- 
fied by indifference with its resultant dimness of 
spiritual vision, any vagary, so it be clothed in 
specious garb, will suffice to beguile it from the 
simplicity of the faith once delivered to the saints. 
Half a century since, in the days of the great 
revival of 1857, when the power of God in the 
salvation of men was made mightily manifest on 
this continent, when the eternal realities of religion 
spoke to men's inmost souls, and were of the very 
warp and woof of their spiritual being, any such 
insidious attempt to undermine their faith in the 
authority and divinity of the sacred records as 
has been witnessed in these last days, would 
have been at once recognized in its true character. 

16 



CRITICISM AND THE CHURCH 



To-day its most radical exponents and champions 
are teachers of the teachers, sitting in the high seats 
of the synagogues, loaded down with all manner 
of incongruous and misdescriptive academic and 
ecclesiastical honors and degrees ; while their half- 
fledged disciples, fearing to be thought uncultured 
traditionalists, eager to be abreast of "modern 
thought," and to be classed as "new theologians" 
are, after a clumsy and halting fashion, following 
as close behind as their limitations will admit, 
holding up to their flocks the glories of evolution 
and "the survival of the fittest" — a motto which, 
by the way, bears a curious family resemblance 
to that other : " Every man for himself, and devil 
take the hindmost." 

The condition indicated is at once a cause and 
an effect — an effect of indifference, and a cause 
of more indifference. It owed its entrance to a 
faith weakened by worldliness ; it signalizes its 
continuance by the spread of a practical unbelief 
amounting almost to bald materialism. We read 
often enough, in the pages of our religious period- 
icals, of laments over the decay of vital godliness 
and the impotence of the church in reaching the 
masses, and of anxious inquiries into the cause of 
the defection. One cause, at any rate, ought not 
to be far to seek. For while complex phenomena 
of this sort can never be attributed to the opera- 
tion of one sole and exclusive cause, still it would 

B 17 



THE HIGHER CRITICISM CROSS-EXAMINED 

seem to be beyond question that the absolute 
reversal of received views as to the composition 
and character of the Scriptures must of necessity 
be profoundly influential in unsettling the faith of 
many, and thereby lowering the tone and standards 
of the Christian life, and loosening the exacting 
demands and obligations of a high spiritual expe- 
rience. Indeed, some of the leaders of the new 
thought seem to recognize this, for they seek to 
console us with the assurance that this is a mere 
temporary phase of doubt, incident to and in- 
separable from a time of flux and change ; that it 
will in the end work itself clear, and things be 
all the better for it. One is tempted to ask : 
" What, in the meantime, of the thousands who, by 
the upheavals and uncertainties of this transition 
period, have been led away after strange gods ? " 
No Christian doubts for a moment the ultimate 
triumph of the truth as it is in Jesus ; but that 
triumph will be sorry comfort for the multitudes 
who, following these new guides, have erred from 
the faith and have been given over to strong 
delusion to believe a lie. 

Of course, those critics who, with sublime in- 
difference to logical consistency, still claim the 
Christian name and profess the Christian faith, 
strenuously protest against the thought that the 
discrediting of the Old Testament in any way 
affects the stability of the foundations of our belief 

18 



CRITICISM AND THE CHURCH 



in the New. But that kind of casuistry which 
assents to the premises while seeking to avoid the 
force of the conclusion is little understood and less 
liked by the common people ; and when men essay 
to prove that the statements of the Bible cannot 
lay claim even to the ordinary veracity which 
obtains between man and man in their mutual 
dealings, and yet maintain that its value as an ex- 
position of divine truth is in nowise impaired, the 
honest man is apt to say : " I take the liberty of 
differing with you ; and if you act as you think, I 
should prefer to deal with you at arm's length." 

Attacks upon the Bible by declared atheists, as 
before suggested, are to be looked for, and do little 
harm. The Christian is forewarned by the source 
whence they come, and is thereby forearmed 
against them — usually ignoring them altogether, 
regarding their perusal as a misuse of time. But 
when they emanate from reverend fathers in God, 
authorized teachers and defenders of the faith — 
not obscure nonentities, but men of high place and 
prominence in the church — he may be excused if 
he views them with much bewilderment and with 
some misgivings. He looks with wonder upon 
propositions advanced by these clerics equaling in 
derogatory significance the utterances of Paine, or 
Hume, or Hobbes of Malmesbury, and he says : 
" If this were written by Colonel Ingersoll, it 
would be intelligible ; but coming from men with 

19 



THE HIGHER CRITICISM CROSS-EXAMINED 

'Reverend' before their names and 'd. d.' after 
them, what am I to think ? " 

For let no one doubt that the Christian is think- 
ing on these subjects. He is thinking, and think- 
ing hard, thousands of him ; and some day his 
thinking will become articulate and vocal — with 
results. He is not an expert linguist, nor a skilled 
theologian, nor a trained logician even ; but never- 
theless he has a logic of his own, the stubborn 
logic of facts, and he acts upon it. He can detect 
anomalies when he sees them, whether they be 
in statute books or in coats and trousers ; and, in 
the long run, he does not follow anomalies, except 
in the way of pursuit, and then only with the fixed 
purpose of abolishing them. 

Many believers whose ideals and standards had 
their foundation in the teachings of an earlier and 
simpler generation, are of the settled conviction 
that the church has fallen on evil days — days of a 
decline in power and of the eclipse of faith. And 
while they are not unmindful of the warning of 
Solomon (or Qoheleth, as the case may be), " Say 
not thou, Why is it that the former days were 
better than these ? for thou dost not inquire wisely 
concerning this "; they nevertheless conceive that 
the facts are too patent to be gainsaid. On the 
one side, they see a decided halt in the numerical 
increase of the church, a lack of old-time love for 
its assemblies and its worship, a marked decline in 

20 



CRITICISM AND THE CHURCH 



old-time religious fervor, and an almost total re- 
laxation of its hold upon the masses ; and on the 
other, the disintegrating processes of the higher 
criticism in active exercise, deleting from the 
record promises of infinite import, dissolving into 
thin air patriarchs and heroes and exemplars of 
the faith, and changing the face of Israel's his- 
tory until not one sign or token of divine guidance 
or divine purpose remains, leaving a ruin where 
once the tabernacle of the Presence stood. And 
although it is possible that these may be mere 
haphazard coincidences without nexus or inter- 
dependence, they believe that an intimate causal 
relation exists between these two sets of phenom- 
ena, and that the first is inexplicable except as the 
result of the second ; which belief the present 
writer is free to affirm that he shares with them. 



21 



II 

CRITICISM IN THE OPEN 



The Bible is in every one' s hands. The critic has no 
other Bible than the public. He does not profess to have 
any additional documents inaccessible to the laity. Nor 
does he profess to find anything in his Bible which the 
ordinary reader may not find. A. Kuenen. 

Wellhausen* s "Prolegomena" gives the English reader 
for the first time an opportunity to form his own conclusions 
on questions which are within the scope of any one who 
reads the English Bible carefully, and is able to think 
clearly, and without prejudice, about its contents. 

— Robertson Smith. 

For which the "English reader" ought to be duly 
thankful, even though he may be of opinion that that same 
opportunity has been open to every one of the class named 
ever since the Bible was first translated into his mother 
tongue. 



II 



CRITICISM IN THE OPEN 

The wayfaring men, though fools, shall not err therein. 

— Isaiah. 

There was a time, not many years since, when 
the battle of the books was being waged behind 
closed doors. The discussions of the pundits 
engaged in the conduct of the controversy in 
question were, perforce, had in executive session, 
and for a long period only faint and indistinct 
rumors of the conflict reached the ears of the 
outside Christian world. The position was taken 
that the nature of the problem was such that 
only adepts in Hebrew, Oriental archaeology, 
and kindred branches of learning had any right 
to be heard, either pro or contra, in regard to 
the processes and investigations to be pursued, 
or to the conclusions deducible therefrom ; and, 
indeed, that they alone were capable of under- 
standing the problem when stated, the process 
when detailed, and the conclusion when reached. 
And, so far as the preliminary discussions were 
concerned, depending as they did upon technical 
questions, there was much force in this claim. 

25 



THE HIGHER CRITICISM CROSS-EXAMINED 

But in the heat of the dispute one important 
fact seems to have been lost sight of, wholly on 
the critical side and partly on the conservative, 
and that is that " the whole congregation of Chris- 
tian people " are necessary parties, with vital and 
inalienable rights and interests in the subject- 
matter of the controversy, which can neither be 
waived by themselves nor overridden by others ; 
and that sooner or later it must be referred to 
them in such wise that no representative character 
on the part of the experts can either take from 
them the right or relieve them of the burden of 
rendering a decision upon the merits. • Not as to 
whether the Bible is the veritable word of God. 
That question is not an open one. It stands ad- 
judged by the history of nineteen Christian cen- 
turies. But as to whether this long-adjudicated 
issue shall be reopened at the bidding of a band 
of German rationalists and their English and 
American echoes. To what end ? That this price- 
less heritage of immemorial ages may be broken 
to pieces, and the church of the living God be 
persuaded to accept in its place as salvage from 
the wreck a secular history of Israel, reconstructed 
along the lines of the Darwinian hypothesis and 
the evolutionary philosophy generally. Sane men 
do not ordinarily part with a valuable inheritance 
on such terms. 

It is to be hoped that the day is not far distant 
26 



CRITICISM IN THE OPEN 



when the church will awake from its slumber and 
will pass upon the claims of the critics, not for- 
mally or simultaneously, perhaps, but none the 
less effectually and finally. Already the matter 
has passed beyond the limits of the esoteric and 
the recondite. Criticism has come out into the 
open, so that those who will may measure its 
dimensions, may see what it is with the light of 
publicity shining upon it, and may judge whether 
it is a living force with the elements of perma- 
nency in it, or only a simulacrum which the wind 
driveth away. And, as Doctor Johnston has shown 
with admirable clearness in the opening chapter of 
his recent work, 1 the average man is a most im- 
portant factor in the solution of this problem. 
Sir Robert Anderson, indeed, argues with great 
force that the specialist, with his expert knowledge 
of one phase of the subject and his inevitable 
theory to support, is actually put at a disadvan- 
tage in reaching an impartial judgment upon the 
matter as an entirety. 2 

But that is, of course, mere heresy. The idea 
that any one, other than an expert Hebraist, 
should venture to dissent from their conclusions, 
which are claimed to depend upon the date and 
analysis of ancient Hebrew documents, is one 
which the critics would view with lofty scorn. 

1 "Bible Criticism and the Average Man," p. I f. 
* "Bible and Modern Criticism," "Pseudo-Criticism." 
27 



THE HIGHER CRITICISM CROSS-EXAMINED 

Would they admit that the non-expert is under 
any circumstances competent to agree with them ? 
If not, why would it not be advisable for them 
to avoid the vernacular altogether and conduct 
their discussions in the original tongues, and so 
effectually exclude the vulgar from meddling with 
matters too high for them ? 

Be that as it may, it is deemed, the critics to 
the contrary notwithstanding, that one of the rank 
and file who claims to possess the ability of the 
ordinary man to follow a train of reasoning when 
it is put into intelligible English and to draw valid 
inferences therefrom, but who makes and can 
make no pretensions to scholarship of any sort, is 
nevertheless warranted in entertaining decided 
views on the invalid methods and the baneful ten- 
dencies of the higher criticism, and that he may 
without undue presumption, offer some comments 
thereon from the Christian standpoint in attempted 
application of those common-sense principles of 
reasoning which prudent men bring to bear on the 
hard facts of life, and on which they are willing to 
base their action and stake their material welfare. 

At the outset it may not be out of place to 
make some preliminary observations. 

i. It seems unfortunate, from the standpoint 
mentioned, that this study should have received 
the name it bears, and that its exponents, or 
at least those among them who still profess to be 

28 



CRITICISM IN THE OPEN 



Christians, should arrogate to themselves the title 
" critic." The term has such sinister connotations 
that its application to believers as descriptive of 
their dealings with and comments on the word of 
God might well be avoided, unless under the com- 
pulsion of absolute necessity, if for no other reason, 
in deference to universal Christian sentiment. 

It may be objected that this is a mere quibble 
upon a word of well-understood meaning and long- 
established usage. But words are things and 
names are powers, and phrases are arguments ex- 
erting an influence far weightier than their bare 
etymological significance would carry. Even in 
its primary meaning of " one who sits in judg- 
ment " the word denotes an attitude natural, it 
may be, in those who reject the authority of the 
Lord Jesus and spurn his claims to headship, but 
which ill befits a Christian teacher who, although 
a searcher and an interpreter, is surely not a 
judge. l Judges, whether of courts or of cattle 
shows, are usually chosen in a regular way by some 
competent authority, and in the case first men- 
tioned the exercise of their judicial functions is 
hedged about by precise rule and precept in order 
that their decisions may be based on the principles 
of the law of which they are interpreters, and not 
on the mere arbitrary dictates of a wandering 
fancy. Outside the ranks of the higher criticism 

1 Wace, "Bible and Modern Investigation," p. 73. 
29 



THE HIGHER CRITICISM CROSS-EXAMINED 

the only judge who elects himself and has an abso- 
lutely free hand is Lynch, J. And he, with his 
fine contempt for the rules of evidence, together 
with his preternatural sagacity in detecting a 
horse thief, presents quite a striking parallel to 
some latter-day critics who, bound by no principle 
of law or logic can, with like superhuman insight, 
identify six words of the Levitical forger imbedded 
in a narrative antedating by half a millennium the 
institution of the priesthood. 

But it has come to pass that in general use its 
secondary meaning of " faultfinder " has over- 
shadowed the etymology of the word "critic," and 
when one hears that some production or other is 
to be criticised, he expects that it is going to be 
picked to pieces. Usually he is not disappointed, 
and the higher the critics are the more likelihood 
is there that his expectations will be realized. As, 
witness their treatment of the Pentateuch, which 
they have literally "picked to pieces." 

And that it is under this latter category that the 
critics themselves desire to come is evidenced 
plainly enough by their own declarations. No 
man, however profound his scholarship or keen 
his literary or historical insight may be, can lay 
claim to the title "critic," if he entertains the old 
views concerning the nature and authority of the 
Bible. ] And when the origin and history of the 

1 Sinker, "Higher Criticism," pp. 2, 3, $3. 



CRITICISM IN THE OPEN 



movement are considered, no good reason is ap- 
parent why any Christian should care to assert 
such a claim. Eichhorn, the originator of the 
phrase, as he was the pioneer in the study of 
the higher criticism, was, as Ewald says, one to 
whom the Bible, from the religious view-point, 
was throughout a sealed book. 1 His chief per- 
manent contribution to the scheme seems to have 
been a determined effort to eliminate the super- 
natural from both the Old and New Testaments. 2 
And the subsequent history of the school shows 
how completely it has fulfilled the promise of its 
youth ; for, amid all the kaleidoscopic forms and 
shifting phases which criticism has assumed dur- 
ing the last century, it has been consistently true 
to this central canon of interpretation, until to-day 
the question is not whether the Bible is divinely 
inspired and an authentic record of divine guidance 
and divine intervention, but whether it is worthy 
of credence at all, or is merely a mixture of myth 
and marvel, fraud and fable, with here and there a 
grain of historical wheat hidden in the vast heap 
of traditional chaff. Hostile it has been from the 
beginning and hostile it will remain to the end ; 
and when so-called Christian teachers range them- 
selves under its banner, they raise presumptions 
against their own fealty which call for evidence 

1 Urquhart, "Insp. and Accuracy of Scrip.," p. 207. 
3 "Encycl. Brit.," Vol. VII., p. 789. 

31 



THE HIGHER CRITICISM CROSS-EXAMINED 

in rebuttal, and which one day the Christian world 
may require at their hands, and, if at all, accept 
their loyalty as demonstrated at the expense of 
their logic. 

2. The assumption of the critic to act in so 
many diverse, not to say incompatible capacities, 
is one which is surely open to serious question, if 
not to absolute ridicule. He is, first of all, an ex- 
pert, a specialist in his own line — usually a man 
with a theory to support. His place is the witness 
box, and it is his to testify to the facts ; and those 
who have been in any degree familiar with the 
course of legal procedure in recent years will 
know that of all classes of evidence expert testi- 
mony is regarded by the courts as least trust- 
worthy, as most open to suspicion, and as calling 
for the severest scrutiny. 1 Indeed, the cases are 
rare in which standing alone the opinions of ex- 
perts (and their testimony seldom amounts to 
more), would be regarded as a sufficient basis for 
judicial action. The critic is, then, a witness ; or, 
if you would stretch his functions to the utmost 
limit of legitimacy, he is also an advocate to press 
by argument his theory as to the facts upon the 
court. But he is not satisfied even with this 
double role. He must ascend the bench, and by 
his charge as judge throw the weight of the court's 

1 Fitzjames Stephen, "Hist, of the Criminal Law," Vol. I., 
P- 575 f. 

32 



CRITICISM IN THE OPEN 



authority into the scale in his own favor ; then as 
jury render a verdict in accordance with his origi- 
nal testimony ; and finally, as sheriff, execute the 
sentence of dismemberment imposed by the court. l 
A most convenient, short-cut method this, and one 
calculated to discourage overmuch controversy. In 
the ordinary walks of life such all-embracing pre- 
tensions are rarely encountered, and when they are 
the pretender is naturally overwhelmed with de- 
served ridicule. To find an exact parallel one 
would have to resort to the pages of comic opera, 
where Pooh Bah was not only the Mikado's prime 
minister, but also held every other office in sight 
that was worth having. 

3. Many Christians object, and strongly object, 
to both the phrase and the practice of the " study 
of the Bible as literature." Of course, from the 
necessities of the case it is couched in terms of 
human speech, and uses alphabetical symbols and 
grammatical forms as the servants of its purpose, 
and therefore in a restricted sense it may be called 
letters. But that for them exhausts its relation to 
the literature of men simply as such. In the highly 
improbable case of a modern critic admitting 
that certain ancient worthies wrote the books at- 
tached to their names, that would still be an incom- 
plete and misleading statement unless he went 
further and said that these holy men of old spake 

1 G. A. Smith, "Modern Criticism," pp. 72, 73. 
C 33 



THE HIGHER CRITICISM CROSS-EXAMINED 

as they were moved by the Holy Ghost. If these 
books are to mean anything worth while to the 
Christian it must be because they are human utter- 
ances plus direct and explicit divine inspiration ; 
and the one constituent is as controlling of the 
category to which they belong as the other. When 
the critic assumes to ignore the latter element, and 
on that assumption to proceed with his dissections 
as though the whole fact were before him, and an- 
nounces his final estimate as covering and account- 
ing for all the phenomena of the case, and as con- 
stituting a complete determination of all the issues 
involved, then the plus becomes an excrescence and 
an impertinence. If, however, the divine agency 
is admitted, not as a mere empty phrase, but 
in any real and substantial sense, his examination 
becomes a futile attempt to solve a problem with 
an important factor absent, and the result reached 
is as valuable and as edifying as though one should 
undertake an exhaustive analysis of a complex 
chemical process or compound without regard to 
its base or its principal reaction ; or as though an- 
other should essay to give a complete account of 
the revolutionary conflict with the Declaration of 
Independence and the conditions which led to its 
proclamation left out of the reckoning ; or a third 
should write a life of George Washington deal- 
ing solely with his career as a land surveyor, and 
yet purporting to explain why he stood first in 

34 



CRITICISM IN THE OPEN 



war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his 
countrymen. 

The study of the Bible as literature is a well- 
sounding phrase. It seems at first blush to be 
eminently fair and reasonable. But when its 
implications are taken into account, then its true 
character becomes at once apparent as an attempt 
to prejudge the whole case in a manner unfavor- 
able to the unique authority of the Scriptures. 
Among the criteria to be applied in the study of 
human history would be surely these : (i) Miracles 
do not happen; and (2) Prophecy does not pre- 
dict. Now, when the literary critic finds in the 
Bible instances of both kinds, i. e., miracles and 
predictive prophecy, what does he do ? Accept 
them as natural concomitants of a divinely ordered 
history and divinely revealed truth ? Not at all. He 
strikes the first out of the record as incredible, and 
condemns the second as made after the event. 

It is true one critic says that " criticism in the 
hands of Christian scholars does not banish or 
destroy the inspiration of the Old Testament ; it 
presupposes it." 1 But this is an affront upon 
common intelligence. It means nothing and com- 

1 Driver, "Introd. to the Literature of the O. T.," 10th ed., 
p. xiii. Some trenchant and well-merited comments on the un- 
critical character of this dexterous evasion are made, and the 
fallacies of the plea exposed by Rev. John Thomas, M. A., of Liver- 
pool, in his recent work, ' '• The Organic Unity of the Pentateuch ' ' ; 
a book well worth the careful consideration of those who think 
the last word has been said upon Pentateuchal criticism. 

35 



THE HIGHER CRITICISM CROSS-EXAMINED 

mits to nothing. For the writer evidently finds 
this presupposed divine inspiration to be no bar in 
the way of reaching conclusions which can have no 
other meaning than, as justly stated by Chancellor 
Lias, that "the Scriptures in their present form are 
not merely tinged with inaccuracy, but are plainly 
and distinctly false, and to a considerable degree 
intentionally false from one end to the other." ! 

In what condition this leaves the inspiration "pre- 
supposed " by the critics it is needless to state. 

1 Lias, " Principles of Biblical Criticism," p. 91. 



36 



Ill 

THE OLD BELIEF 



In the severe discipline that followed the Fall ; in the 
choice of a single family to be the depositary of the belief 
in the One True God; in the establishment of the laws 
which were necessary for a community organized on that 
belief; in the moral education of the people of Israel by 
blessings and by chastisements; in the development of the 
inward spirit of the law by means of the prophetic writings 
until the purpose of God stood revealed in all its clearness 
in the person and life of Jesus Christ — we see One Mind 
manifest throughout, using means natural and supernatural 
as it seemed best, but in all working to one end — the mani- 
festation of God as infinite Power, infinite Wisdom, and 
infinite Love. — J. J. Lias. 



None is like Jeshurun' s God, 

So great, so strong, so high, 
Lo, he spreads his wings abroad, 

He rides upon the sky. 
Israel is his first-born son, 

God, the almighty God is thine, 
See him to thy help come down, 

The excellence divine. 

Thee the great Jehovah deigns 

To succor and defend; 
Thee the eternal God sustains, 

Thy Maker and thy Friend. 
He is Israel's sure defense, 

Israel all his care shall prove, 
Kept by watchful providence 

And ever-waking love. 

— C. Wesley. 



Ill 

THE OLD BELIEF 

The faith which was once delivered to the saints. 

— Jude. 

The declaration of those things which were once 
most surely believed by Christians of a generation 
not yet wholly departed, would seem to-day like 
echoes of a far-off and half-forgotten time. An 
attempt at their restatement, not with the system- 
atic precision or in the technical terms of the 
professional theologian, but after the simple and 
inartificial fashion in which they presented them- 
selves to the devout and uncritical believer in 
those earlier and happier days, will show to what 
lengths the church has traveled during the past 
thirty years. Advocates of progress at any cost 
will say, in the direction of elevation and breadth 
of view ; others, that those phrases merely stand 
for vagueness and indifference, stages on the road 
to the desired goal of quasi-religious rationalism, 
a church without dogma, which to them is the 
same thing as a body without a soul. 

These older Christians believed that the human 
race sprang from the loins of Adam, who came 

39 



THE HIGHER CRITICISM CROSS-EXAMINED 

complete and perfect from the hands of God, in 
some way they knew not how, fashioned after the 
image and likeness of his Creator. From this first 
estate Adam, by transgression, fell, losing the 
image, as he had forfeited the favor of his Maker 
and bringing upon himself and upon his race the 
condemnation of death. But even while sentence 
was being passed the infinite mercy of God coupled 
with the doom the hope of a Deliverer. This hope, 
gathering clearness with each succeeding age, 
renewed in the prophecy of Noah that God should 
dwell in the tents of Shem, was solemnly con- 
firmed in the covenant with Abraham, the historic 
starting-point of definite revelation, and further 
limited in the line of Isaac and of Israel, his son 
and his son's son, in whose seed all nations of the 
earth were to be blessed. 

From that time forward, to quote the succinct 
and yet comprehensive summary of Professor 
Robertson : 

The people of Israel stood in a peculiar relation to God, 
and received from him special intimations of his will and 
character, and were by him peculiarly guided and directed 
in their growth into a nation, and in their existence as a 
State. By a signal display of divine power they were deliv- 
ered from the bondage of Egypt and led into the desert of 
Sinai, where the covenant made with Abraham was renewed 
with awful sanctions. Upon the covenant was reared the 
law, ordaining holiness on God' s people, fencing round 
their daily life with ceremonial prescriptions, and educating 

40 



THE OLD BELIEF 



their spiritual life so that they might be in deed as in ideal 
a kingdom of priests, an holy nation. Up to this ideal, 
however, they never came. On the contrary, they sinned 
under the very shadow of Sinai ; and throughout the course 
of their journey in the wilderness, marked as it was by 
constant tokens of divine guidance, they exhibited continual 
backsliding and fell into one corruption after another. 
Even when, by signal displays of divine favor, they were 
brought into the promised land and made victorious over 
its inhabitants, they sinned against the God who had 
favored them, and conformed to the practices of their 
neighbors. Nevertheless they were not rejected, nor was 
their education interrupted. A series of prophets, from 
Samuel's time onwards, arose to testify against them and 
to plead for a higher life. These men, with one voice, 
whether in the northern or the southern kingdom, tell the 
same tale of God's great doings for his people in the past; 
they reprove, rebuke, exhort; they confront kings and 
people, and denounce priests and false prophets alike — the 
burden of their message being the same from age to age. 
Nor do they lose faith in God's promise. As troubles 
gather about the nation, their reproof of sin becomes more 
stern, their enforcement of God's righteousness more em- 
phatic, but their trust in his faithfulness remains unshaken. 
As the fabric of the nation falls to pieces, their views 
become only the more spiritual, and hope lives on even 
in captivity. It was indeed the voice of prophecy and the 
belief in its fulfillment that sustained the captives in Babylon 
and stimulated the pious under Ezra and Nehemiah to 
return to their native land, and there, cured finally of 
idolatry, to set up the worship of God with punctilious 
regard to the precepts of the old law, which, during their 
prosperity, had been slighted. 1 

1 "Early Religion of Israel, " Vol. I., p. 31 f. 
41 



THE HIGHER CRITICISM CROSS-EXAMINED 

To Christians of the time mentioned this law was 
not only precept but prophecy, and while it had 
primary relation to the life and conduct of Israel 
under the old covenant, it had also a forward look, 
and was big with the promise of a new and better 
covenant and the unfolding of a larger and fuller 
revelation of God, not only to Israel, but to the 
whole world. It was to them the shadow of things 
to come, of which the substance was Christ. 

They saw, moreover, in certain characters of 
the Bible — Joseph, Moses, Aaron, and others — par- 
tial and incomplete, but none the less divinely 
ordained types of Him who was to come. More 
particularly the Mosaic history and institutions, 
law, ritual, observances, tabernacle, and priesthood, 
indeed everything that was basal in the life and 
history of the chosen race, pointed with unerring 
precision to the same event, and were prophecies 
in act and fact of some aspect in the life and mis- 
sion of our divine Lord, or were illustrative of 
cardinal elements of gospel truth. The paschal 
lamb with its sheltering blood sprinkled on lintel 
and doorpost spoke to them of " Christ our pass- 
over who was sacrificed for us." * The great day 
of atonement with its interceding priest, bringing 
within the veil the blood of the sin offering, be- 
came transparent, and they saw through it the 
form of One greater than Aaron, who, being both 

1 1 Cor. 5 : 7. 

42 



THE OLD BELIEF 



sacrifice and priest, by his own blood entered in 
once into the holy place not made with hands, 
even into heaven itself, to appear in the presence 
of God for them, having obtained eternal redemp- 
tion for all who should believe. 1 

And so on through all the details of the sacri- 
ficial system of the Levitical law, and all the salient 
features of the history of Israel — the deliverance 
from Egypt, the passage through the Red Sea, the 
manna in the wilderness, the water from the smit- 
ten rock, the guiding pillar of cloud, the brazen 
serpent, the entrance into the promised land — all 
headed up in Christ and found in him their final 
and complete fulfillment. 

In like manner to him gave all the prophets 
witness. He was the burden of their message, 
and his Spirit being with them, they testified 
beforehand of the manner and place of his birth, 
of the time of his appearing, of his lineage accord- 
ing to the flesh, of his relation to the Father, of 
his absolute submission to the divine will, of his 
anointing by the Spirit, of the nature of his re- 
deeming work, of his vicarious sufferings and 
death, and of the glory that should follow. They 
saw too that these minute and intimate correspond- 
ences were not confined to any one period, nor 
exhibited solely in any one class of Old Testament 
writings, but ran through the whole course of 

1 Heb. 9 : 10. Moorehead : "Studies in Mosaic Inst." 
43 



THE HIGHER CRITICISM CROSS-EXAMINED 

sacred history, and were manifested alike in law, 
annal, psalmody, prophecy, and apocalypse. This, 
in their view, negatived any assumption that they 
were vague, chance coincidences, or such unde- 
signed sequences as might be traced through any 
given series of events, and evinced a unity of plan 
and a continuity of purpose which stamped upon 
them the sign-manual of Deity, and referred them 
unmistakably to the determinate counsel and fore- 
knowlege of God. 

And when in the fullness of time the Only Be- 
gotten of the Father came on his saving mission 
to this world, their faith was that he lived, suffered, 
died, and rose again " according to the Scriptures." 
To them the Christian revelation was no isolated 
and unrelated phenomenon, new-sprung out of 
nothing, but was rooted and grounded in an older 
covenant, which in turn was confirmed by two 
immutable things wherein it was impossible for 
God to lie, that they might have strong consolation 
who had fled for refuge to lay hold on the hope 
set before them. 

This gospel of the Son of God they regarded as 
the perfect and final revelation of the love of 
God to man. It was the faith once for all de- 
livered to the saints, full-orbed and complete, as 
to which naught could be added nor aught taken 
away ; admitting of no change and susceptible of 
no improvement. It was no mere intermediate 

44 



THE OLD BELIEF 



link in a chain of natural evolutionary processes, 
no germ containing simply the potentiality of de- 
velopment to larger and finer issues. It was the 
topmost apex of revealed truth, beyond which 
there could be no ascent. As such it was theirs 
to reject or to accept, and their conviction was 
that upon an unfeigned and hearty reception of 
this truth, applied and vitalized by the power of 
the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven, there 
was wrought in them that change which was to 
make them meet to be partakers of the inherit- 
ance of the saints in light, to deliver them from 
the power of darkness and translate them into the 
kingdom of God's dear Son. 

They believed further that he would come again, 
even as he had said, and that this coming was the 
hope of the church, for which all true Christians 
should watch, and upon which hinged the res- 
toration of Israel, the blessedness of the world, 
and the final triumph of good over evil. And 
strange to say, there are still those who are look- 
ing for the Master's appearing, and who daily in- 
clude in their prayers the petition, " Even so, come, 
Lord Jesus." 

It is entirely plain that a theology based on 
such assumptions and proceeding along such lines, 
is hopelessly out of touch with Christianity ac- 
cording to the prevailing mode. The high, dry 
air of modern Christian culture is altogether too 

45 



THE HIGHER CRITICISM CROSS-EXAMINED 

rarefied for crude conceptions of the kind men- 
tioned to thrive in. We are nothing nowadays 
if not philosophical, and the gospel, to have any 
standing at all in scholastic circles, must be re- 
stated in terms of the latest philosophy of origin 
or history — in other words, of the newest popular 
adaptation of the evolutionary hypothesis. And 
our men of light and leading are to-day engaged in 
the congenial task of rescuing the " sweet secret 
of authentic Christianity " from the mass of myth 
and dogma under which it has lain buried during 
the dark ages of the past nineteen centuries. The 
old beliefs, however, we are consolingly told, " do 
not die ; the Zeitgeist breathes on them, and they 
are changed." They are indeed, "into something 
new and strange." Although perhaps the word 
" change " is hardly descriptive of the fate which 
the old faith has met at the hands of the new 
philosophy. 



46 



IV 

THE OLD BOOK 



When quiet in my house I sit, 
Thy book be my companion still, 

My joy thy sayings to repeat, 
Talk o' er the records of thy will, 

And search the oracles divine 

Till every heartfelt word be mine. 

Oh, may thy gracious words divine 

Subject of all my converse be, 
So shall the Lord his follower join, 

And walk and talk himself with me ; 
So shall I all his presence prove 
And know his everlasting love. 

— C. Wesley. 



IV 

THE OLD BOOK 

God ... at sundry times and in divers manners spake 
in time past unto the fathers by the prophets. 

— Hebrews. 

The attitude of the representative Christian of 
the old-fashioned type toward the Book was no 
uncertain one. He simply received it fully and 
unreservedly as the written word of God, a com- 
plete revelation of the mind and will of God to 
men, an infallible rule of life, an authoritative 
standard of faith, and a sole and ultimate appeal in 
all matters of duty and doctrine. 

Even though in his days the rage for theorizing 
and systematizing had not attained to anything 
like its present proportions, many theories of in- 
spiration were from time to time formulated ; but 
he did not greatly concern himself about them. 
The fact of inspiration sufficed for him. Any at- 
tempt to rule upon the question of degrees of in- 
spiration within the book he would have at once 
condemned as unprofitable and presumptuous. 
That question, if such an one had been mooted, 
he would have pronounced to belong to the secret 
D 49 



THE HIGHER CRITICISM CROSS-EXAMINED 

counsels of Deity, on which it did not become him 
to dogmatize. Whatever inspiration might mean, 
to him it was in all places and for all purposes 
plenary, and a sufficient guaranty that what he 
read was a divinely given word written for his 
learning and profitable for doctrine, for reproof, 
for correction, for instruction in righteousness, 
that he might be perfect, thoroughly furnished 
unto all good works. But this does not mean 
that he used it with an entire lack of discrimina- 
tion, recognizing no relative importance or appli- 
cability of one part over another, but consulting it 
as one would a dream book or a magic oracle, as 
he is slanderously reported to have done. Strange 
as it may seem to an arrogant modern pundit, he 
did not altogether take leave of common sense 
when he approached the study of Holy Writ. On 
the contrary, the fear was ever before his eyes 
that he might through human ignorance or pre- 
sumption handle it deceitfully, and his unceasing 
prayer was that he might be a workman needing 
not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of 
truth. Of course, there ever existed for him the 
danger of too rigid an adherence to its strict let- 
ter in violation of its inner intent. But of this 
danger he was not ignorant, and as he read he 
prayed that the Lord by his Spirit would shine 
upon the truths of his word, and his faith was 
that this petition was heard and answered. 

5o 



THE OLD BOOK 



He realized too, that understanding was condi- 
tioned upon obedience. He was not unmindful of 
his Lord's words, " If any man will do his will, he 
shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of God." 
And he knew full well that every duty left un- 
done would obscure for him some truth he would 
otherwise have known. Commentaries he valued 
according to the measure of the evangelical spirit 
evinced and the experimental knowledge of the 
spiritual content of biblical truth manifested. On 
the scholastic side they did not strongly appeal to 
him ; but on the whole his estimate of the value 
of the word was so high that he was infinitely 
more interested in the study of the Bible itself 
than in the reading of books about the Bible. 
And he did read his Bible, and knew it from be- 
ginning to end. This knowledge colored his con- 
ceptions of life and duty, molded his habits of 
thought and action, and impressed itself upon his 
forms of speech, seasoning his conversation with 
godly salt. His delight was in the law of the 
Lord, and in that law did he meditate day and 
night. He was emphatically a man of the book. 

The charge of bibliolatry, if the word or the 
taunt had been in vogue in his day, he would have 
indignantly denied, knowing that his reverent love 
for the Author of the word would effectually pre- 
vent him from belittling the light itself, because of 
his regard for the medium through which it was 

5i 



THE HIGHER CRITICISM CROSS-EXAMINED 

refracted, or from yielding to either, the devotion 
due to its Source, the supreme object of his adora- 
tion and service. As a choice of evils, however, 
he would much rather have had the reputation of 
a bibliolater than that of a biblioclast. 

The fact that its contents were in matter and in 
form as varied as the manifold activities and cir- 
cumstances of human life presented no difficulties 
to his mind. For whether he read history, law, 
ritual, biography, allegory, homily, apothegm, 
hymnody, prophecy, or apocalypse in its pages, he 
clearly perceived under all diversity of mode the 
unity of one informing Spirit and through all the 
intricacies of the pattern he reverently traced the 
master-hand of the great designer, knowing that 
it was God who at sundry times and in divers 
manners spake in time past unto the fathers by 
the prophets. Though many pens transcribed the 
message as the word of the Lord came to seer and 
singer and historian from age to age, he saw the 
sign manual of its author and finisher on every 
line, convinced as he was that the prophecy came 
not in old time by the will of man, but that holy 
men of God spake as they were moved by the 
Holy Ghost. He was verily assured that through 
all its varieties of form, of subject, of treatment, 
the same unalterable and eternal purpose ran — to 
declare the mind of God and to set forth to men 
the way of life — so that whatsoever things were 

52 



THE OLD BOOK 



written aforetime were written for his learning, 
that he, through patience and comfort of the 
Scriptures, might have hope. In the history and 
utterances of patriarch and lawgiver and priest 
and prophet he beheld the initial and preparatory 
stages of the revelation of the living God ; he 
heard the one voice speaking the living word 
through many messengers until it reached its 
consummation in the incarnate Word, the word 
made flesh and dwelling among men, whose glory 
they beheld — the glory as of the only begotten of 
the Father — full of grace and truth. To him all 
Hebrew scripture was eloquent of Christ, leading to 
Christ, resting in Christ, and paling before Christ, 
as the lesser before the greater glory. ■ And this 
was true not only of the Messianic prophecies, 
commonly so called, but of all Scripture, so that 
he could say with Dean Alford : " The whole 
Scriptures are a testimony to Him ; the whole his- 
tory of the chosen people, with its types, its law, 
and its prophecies is a showing forth of Him." 
With a habit akin to that of the ancient seers he in- 
quired and searched diligently what or what manner 
of time the Spirit of Christ which was in them did 
signify when it testified beforehand the sufferings 
of Christ and the glory that should follow. 

He would be, indeed, surprised to learn, as we 
are now told by a distinguished modern exegete, 

1 Pierson, ''Many Infallible Proofs," p. 263. 
53 



THE HIGHER CRITICISM CROSS-EXAMINED 

that in so doing he became a mere flatterer of his 
Lord, overdoing typology by spinning plausible 
allegories and assiduously polishing each rite and 
institution of the Jewish law in the attempt to make 
it a mirror of him and his sacrifice, and without 
moral insight or real devotion heaping upon him 
indiscriminately all the titles of Old Testament his- 
tory, and symbolizing every detail of Jewish worship 
so as to find in them a proof of his divinity. 1 But 
the unchristian imputation of unworthy motives 
he would have passed over in silence as beneath 
his notice. Nor would the jaunty condemnation 
of his methods have deterred him from prosecuting 
his labor of love in following out his Lord's in- 
junction : " Search the Scriptures, for they are 
they which testify of me." And as between 
Henry Alford and George Adam Smith, he would 
not for one moment have hesitated to decide which 
one most truly breathed his Master's spirit, or 
against whom the lack of " moral insight or real 
devotion" could properly be charged. And this, 
notwithstanding the fact that the latter felicitates 
himself upon his superior perspicacity in discover- 
ing types of Christ where he says no one ever 
thought of looking for them before — namely, in 
the " Song of Deborah " and " David's Dirge upon 
Saul and Jonathan." 2 

1 G. A. Smith, "Modern Criticism," etc., p. 146. 

2 Smith, Op. cit., p. 147. 

54 



THE OLD BOOK 



Critical methods, as the term is understood to- 
day, he would surely have considered incompatible 
with his reverence for the word of God, and he 
most certainly would not have traveled to Ger- 
many to borrow from avowed unbelievers and 
rationalists the apparatus with which to conduct 
his researches and the canons of interpretation by 
which his conclusions were to be governed. In- 
deed, the only critical method which he would 
have regarded as either fitting or wholesome was 
that employed by the Bereans, who received the 
word with all readiness of mind and searched the 
Scriptures daily whether these things were so. 

He realized, moreover, his absolute dependence 
upon the light and guidance of the Holy Spirit for 
a right understanding of its true meaning and in- 
tent. And he never approached its study without 
breathing the spirit of the psalmist's prayer : 
" Open thou mine eyes that I may behold won- 
drous things out of thy law." A verse from the 
hymnody of that period expresses truly the general 
conviction of Christians in that regard : 

Still we believe, almighty Lord, 

Whose presence fills both earth and 
heaven, 

The meaning of the written word 
Is by thine inspiration given. 

Thou only dost thyself explain 

The secret mind of God to man. 

55 



THE HIGHER CRITICISM CROSS-EXAMINED 

With whatever purpose he pondered its pages, 
whether educational, devotional, or for homiletic 
use, he always essayed its interpretation with the 
prayer that God might spare the hand put forward 
to touch his ark, and " with a sense of utter weak- 
ness before the power of his word, and inability to 
sound the depths even of its simplest sentence." * 

This reverential habit naturally determined his 
attitude toward the difficulties and obscurities 
which from time to time confronted him. He 
never dreamed of attributing these difficulties to a 
lack of harmony or of divine direction on the part 
of the biblical writers. They might be formidable, 
but he was persuaded that they were soluble ; and 
that the defect lay in his own ignorance, and not 
in the fallibility of the word. He was content to 
let obscurities remain in darkness until in his own 
good time God should be pleased by his Spirit to 
shine upon them ; and this, not for the mere satis- 
faction of his curiosity, but, when necessary, for 
his spiritual growth and sustenance, or for guidance 
in the path wherein he was called to tread. Resolv- 
ing discords by destroying the harpstrings, he was 
not sufficiently " advanced " in those uncritical 
days to appreciate. 

He was an eager student of the prophetic word ; 
and while he fully recognized in it the presence of 

1 Dean Alford, quoted by Sir Robert Anderson, in "The Bible 
and Modern Criticism," p. 13. 

56 



THE OLD BOOK 



an element of even greater importance than that 
of prediction, he still cherished the testimony of 
fulfilled prophecy as a valuable item of evidence of 
the divine origin of revealed religion, if such ex- 
ternal support were needed. It was a matter of 
faith with him that the secrets of the Lord had 
been revealed to the prophets who, whether wit- 
ting or unwitting, lifted the veil of the future with 
an unerring precision altogether beyond the utmost 
reach of human prescience; that 

Thoughts beyond their thought 
To those high bards were given ; 

that, in short, the voice of Him who sees the end 
from the beginning spoke in and through them of 
the things which should be thereafter. And as he 
read in the pages of history what was to him 
abundant confirmation of the express fulfillment of 
many of these predictions, 1 an element of stability 
was imparted to his comfortable assurance that not 
one jot or tittle should pass from the word until 
all should be fulfilled. 

Of course, he would be chided by the " Chris- 
tian critic " of to-day for his mistaken view of the 
function and scope of prophecy as one worthy only 
of an age of superstition and credulity. He would 
be informed that the predictive is an altogether 
negligible quality in prophecy, if indeed it ever 

1 See Pierson : Op. cit., pp. 37-78, 1 85-2 14. 

57 



THE HIGHER CRITICISM CROSS-EXAMINED 

connoted such a quality at all ; that it was a vulgar 
use of the name " prophet " to employ it as de- 
scriptive of "one who foretells the future" ; and 
that " of this meaning it is, perhaps, the first duty 
of every student of prophecy earnestly and stub- 
bornly to rid himself." * For, to the scientific 
exegetes of the hour, everything which savors of 
the supernatural is a feature to be " earnestly and 
stubbornly " combated. Judged by their rule, the 
prophets were not foretellers but forthtellers — 
simply righteous men who had higher " concep- 
tions " of God than their neighbors, a wide and 
clear outlook upon their times, a keen eye for the 
implications of facts, and sound judgment as to 
the inexorable logic of events, whose utterances 
were directed, and substantially limited, to their 
immediate audience and to the evils and needs of 
the then present occasion ; faithful preachers, in a 
word, popular or unpopular according to the tenor 
of their message. 

Now, if this be all that prophecy means, there 
does not seem to be any good reason why the 
prophetic canon should ever have closed ; or why 
its bulk might not be from time to time augmented 
by such utterances as Doctor Parkhurst's sermons 
on municipal corruption, and the ecclesiastico-legal 
portions of the book enriched, even at this late date, 
by the inclusion of, say, Doctor Briggs' discourse 

1 Smith : " Book of the Twelve Prophets," Vol. I., p. II. 

58 



THE OLD BOOK 



on " Episcopal Orders and the Apostolical Suc- 
cession." This would only be following the recent 
suggestion of a canon of the Church of England 
that parts of the Old Testament should be removed 
from its lectionary, and selections from religious 
literature substituted in their place. 

Of course, the Christian of the time and type 
mentioned would have been the first to admit that 
prophetic gifts of a sort survived through all the 
ages of the church. Indeed, he would have in- 
sisted that all true preaching partook of the nature 
of prophecy. Only, he would have been careful, 
in denning the term, to limit it to that spiritual 
insight which is at once the call and the qualifica- 
tion of the preacher to expound and enforce the 
written word. And he would in no wise have 
thought of elevating him to a parity with those 
Hebrew prophets, whose divinely dictated oracles 
formed an integral part of that indivisible, organic 
whole which we name " the revelation of God in 
Christ Jesus," of which revelation the Bible is 
the inspired and infallible record. On the other 
nand, he would have resisted just as strongly any 
attempt to lower scriptural prophecy to the level 
of, or place it in the same category with, any 
extra-canonical utterance, however exalted or edi- 
fying it might be. He was no eulogist of igno- 
rance, nor ever looked upon it as the " mother of 
devotion." On the contrary, he welcomed all the 

59 



THE HIGHER CRITICISM CROSS-EXAMINED 

light which consecrated learning and expository 
genius could throw upon the meaning of the word ; 
and he thankfully counted, in the fellowship of 
those like-minded with him, a goodly company of 
scholars with names as eminent as any that were 
ever inscribed on the beadroll of fame. 

But learning and scholarship were of use to him 
only when they were the handmaids of piety. To 
godless erudition, he would have said, " Thou hast 
neither part nor lot in this matter." And he would 
have questioned its ability to apprehend even the 
alphabet of revelation. On the other hand, he 
was quick to recognize the presence of profound 
spiritual insight and sound biblical knowledge in 
those whom the world classed as unlettered. For 
he remembered that in Pentecostal days the bold- 
ness of " ignorant and unlearned men " confounded 
the wisdom of the Sanhedrin ; and he believed 
that the same Spirit that moved them was still 
present, and potent, and operative upon the hearts 
of God's children, irrespective either of the pres- 
ence or the lack of what men call education. 

He would have held in light esteem the assidu- 
ous labors of the modern critics in their attempts 
to account on natural grounds for the way in which 
this or that portion of the Bible came to be writ- 
ten ; while their efforts to " fit the text to the 
occasion" by the projection of hypothetical " his- 
torical settings," he would have characterized as 

60 



THE OLD BOOK 



wild surmise and riotous imagination, unchastened 
by reverence and without foundation in fact. He 
was vastly more concerned to be familiar with the 
word as it stood, so that by God's help he might 
translate its teachings into character and conduct, 
and be fittingly equipped to be a cup-bearer of the 
water of life to a dying world. 

This was his regimen, and it bred giants ; men 
of whom the world was not worthy, who loved not 
their lives unto the death, who resisted unto blood, 
earnestly contending for the faith once delivered 
unto the saints, and who could say at the close of 
their warfare, " I have fought a good fight." The 
sole weapon with which they went forth conquer- 
ing and to conquer, was the sword of the Spirit, 
which is the word of God. 



61 



THE NEW HISTORY 



The origination of the monotheistic conception in the 
prophets of the eighth century would be as great a puzzle 
as its origination in the days of Abraham. By no process of 
development can we evolve any of the Belim into Jehovah, 
the lofty and holy One inhabiting eternity, ruling wisely in 
heaven and justly upon earth. The prophetic writings of 
the eighth century are unaccountable unless as the out- 
growth of a long previous course of reflections upon higher 
than heathen beliefs. If Hebrew religion started from the 
idea, however crudely apprehended, of the unity of God, 
the creator and ruler of the world, then the truths pro- 
claimed by Amos and Isaiah, and the clearer perception of 
these truths expressed by Jeremiah and Ezekiel, are natural 
developments of the original faith. If otherwise, the proph- 
ets are personalities as inexplicable as Abraham himself, and 
their teaching is indeed ' ' as great a psychological and moral 
mystery as any of the miracles recorded in Scripture." 

— Archibald Scott. 



THE NEW HISTORY 

As for this Moses, . . we wot not what is become of him. 

— Exodus. 

We have changed all that. In educated circles 
to-day neither the old belief nor the old book has 
any standing in court, even with those who give a 
qualified and provisional assent to a catena of neb- 
ulous, subjective speculations which they dignify 
by the name of the philosophy of the Christian 
religion. Culture, faith, and philosophy must at all 
hazards coincide ; and if there must needs be a clash 
it will .be neither culture nor philosophy which will 
go by the board. The fad of the hour is a brand 
new history of the human race and of the origin 
and growth of religion, warranted to harmonize 
with the most extravagant of all the protean forms 
which the evolutionary theory can by any possi- 
bility assume. 

Once it was said of man, " God created man 
in his own image ; in the image of God created 
he him," and it was accepted as an accurate, if 
summary, account of his origin. But we know 
better now. 

e 65 



THE HIGHER CRITICISM CROSS-EXAMINED 

The plain truth — and we have no reason to hide it — is that 
we do not know the beginnings of man' s life, of his history, 
of his sin ; we do not know them historically on historical 
evidence ; and we should be content to let them remain in 
the dark until science throws what light it can upon them. 1 

That is to say, we must turn our backs upon 
Genesis, and in the pages of Darwin and Haeckel 
find as the progenitor of the race, not Adam, cre- 
ated in the image of his Maker, but a hairy biped, 
probably arboreal in his habits, with pointed ears 
and prehensile toes, and, perhaps, a tail ; which 
appendage, if he lived in trees, was certainly a 
convenience. The fall of man never happened ; 
or, if there was a fall, it was, as a celebrated 
preacher once said, a fall upwards. Sin, instead 
of being a willful transgression of express divine 
command, becomes a mere defect in the adjust- 
ment of the organism to its environment, an in- 
evitable and indispensable, if not indeed benefi- 
cent constituent of human nature in its upward 
struggle ; an illustrative instance of the " soul of 
good in things evil," and in the final event to be 
educated and bred out of the race much as one 
would by careful selection and tendance breed de- 
fects out of and desirable qualities into a flock of 
merinos or a herd of Jersey cattle. 

In like manner, leaving our Saviour's life and 
mission out of the question for the moment, there 

1 Professor Denny, "Studies in Theology," p. 79. 
66 



THE NEW HISTORY 



has never been any revelation of God to men 
definitely and distinctly recognizable as such. In 
place of this we have from the beginnings of his- 
tory and far beyond, human conceptions of God 
innumerable, ranging from the most degraded 
forms of fetichism to the " ethic monotheism " of 
the later Hebrew prophets ; no one, so far as ex- 
ternal authority goes, being entitled to claim pref- 
erence over any other, inasmuch as all are alike 
destitute of objective reality. Each man thus, or 
group of men, is the creator of his or its own 
deity ; and the parody : " So man created God in 
his own image, in the image of man created he 
him," flippant and profane though it be, is never- 
theless absolutely true to the facts of the case 
according to the requirements of the theory under 
consideration. 

And since there is no room for a direct and 
authentic communication from God to men in this 
scheme there was of course no divine call of 
Abraham ; if, indeed, such a personage ever ex- 
isted. On this latter point there is some diver- 
gence between the critics, the difference, however, 
being without real significance. The German 
critic, who holds the center of the field to-day, re- 
gards him as a late invention, a fictitious person 
who, even in the days of Amos, had not reached 
the same stage as Isaac and Jacob. x One Scotch 

1 Wellhausen, "Prolegomena" etc., p. 320. 

67 



THE HIGHER CRITICISM CROSS-EXAMINED 

follower, less logical and not so thorough in his 
zeal for destruction, admits a critical reaction in 
favor of recognizing the personality of Abraham. ■ 
On what evidence this reaction rests it is impossi- 
ble to conjecture. He adduces none ; so it is 
probably due to sheer kindliness on his part and a 
dislike for literary homicide unless it is absolutely 
necessary. Even so Abraham is a name and 
nothing else ; for the writer, with the air of one 
who has reached the end of his tether in the way 
of compromising admissions, goes on to caution 
us against harboring the delusion that the patri- 
archal narratives contain more than " a substratum 
of actual personal history." And then with nai've 
confidence he asks, " But who wants to be sure of 
more? Who needs to be sure of more?" 2 He 
must be a highly unreasonable person who would 
"ask for more" after such a magnanimous con- 
cession to " traditionalist " weaknesses. 

With the history of the patriarchs fall the divine 
revelations and promises of which it forms the 
record ; and whether they were mere names or 
actual persons matters little so far as their connec- 
tion with revealed religion is concerned. If they 
existed at all they were rank idolaters probably of 
a rather low type. For many centuries later the 
religion of their putative descendants was still only 

1 G. A. Smith, " Modern Crit. and Preaching of O. T.," p. 107. 

2 Ibid. 

68 






THE NEW HISTORY 



"a polytheism with an opportunity for monotheism 
at the heart of it " l — whatever in particular that 
extraordinary phrase may happen to mean ; per- 
haps that possessing a favorite tribal deity made it 
easier for them by degrees to reach the point of 
denial of deities of other tribes. So Mormonism 
might be called polygamy with an opportunity for 
monogamy at the heart of it, the Mormon becom- 
ing gradually so enamored of his favorite wife that 
he is finally moved to discard the others on her 
account. Truly, if the critics are right, 

God moves in a mysterious way 
His wonders to perform. 

The existence of Moses seems to be pretty gen- 
erally conceded. The writer just quoted says that 
no one has ever doubted it. But in this he is mis- 
taken, for M. Maurice Vernes characterizes the 
great lawgiver as a post-exilic creation of the law- 
yers of the Judean restoration. His leadership of 
the Israelites in their escape from Egyptian bond- 
age seems also to be accepted, although at least 
one critic has been found to deny that Israel ever 
sojourned in Egypt. 2 When we inquire into his 
connection with their religion, however, we are on 
more uncertain ground. For while Kuenen says 
that the germs of the higher consciousness of God 

1 Smith, Op. cit., p. 131. 

2 Stade, "Geschichtt der Volkes Israel," Vol. I., p. 129. 

69 



THE HIGHER CRITICISM CROSS-EXAMINED 

were present in the Mosaic age, 1 it must be remem- 
bered that the Israelites at that time, and for long 
centuries thereafter, were polytheists, and that 
Jehovah was no more to them than Chemosh was 
to Moab or Milcom to the Ammonites. 2 This 
consciousness, then, can hardly have been of a 
very elevated type. Indeed, Wellhausen claims that 
for Moses to have given them enlightened concep- 
tions of God would have been to offer them a 
stone instead of bread, and that in that particular 
he probably allowed them to continue in the same 
way of thinking with their fathers. 3 

There appears to be an intimation here that 
Moses himself occupied a more exalted plane, 
although the source of his own superior knowledge 
is not suggested. But the idea that he was the 
depositary of an immediate divine revelation and 
the medium through which a divinely enacted 
body of law was to be promulgated is a mistaken 
one, wholly unsupported by evidence; and any 
statement to the contrary in the record is, to put 
it charitably, a mere projection of very late con- 
ceptions into very early times, or, to call things 
by their right names, the wholesale fabrication of 
fictions under the guise of history. 

1 The germ theory does certainly crop out in unexpected places. 

2 Smith, Op. cit., p. 151 ; Kuenen, "National Religions," 
p. 116. 

3 "Prolegomena" etc., p. 437. 

70 






THE NEW HISTORY 



So, then, in no real sense, certainly in no unique 
sense, was Israel chosen of Jehovah, the eternally 
existing One — chosen of him that they might be 
a peculiar treasure unto him above all people, a 
kingdom of priests and an holy nation, in whom 
all families of the earth were to be blessed. That 
is an idea which is no longer " tenable in our days." 
They stood on no other footing than their neigh- 
bors. Their religion was not to be distinguished 
either in origin or in character from those of the 
surrounding nations. 1 It was " nothing less, but 
also nothing more." 2 Nor was Jehovah the al- 
mighty maker of heaven and earth. He was sim- 
ply a local god with strictly circumscribed tribal 
jurisdiction, whose worship was in no wise incon- 
sistent with a belief in the reality of other deities, 
but rather, from its peculiar limitations, implied a 
multiplicity of national gods. Mount Sinai was 
selected as the scene of his manifestation — not 
because the fact was so, but because it was a sort 
of Oriental Olympus, the sacred mountain of the 
Semitic peoples. 3 The religion was, in short, a 
thoroughly idolatrous cult, having in its primitive 
stages a close affinity with bull worship, indications 
of which are found by the critics in Jeroboam's 
images at Bethel and Dan, and in the " story " of 

1 Robertson Smith, " Religion of the Semites," p. 3 f. 

2 Kuenen, "Religion of Israel," Vol. I., p. 5. 

3 Wellhausen, "Pro/eg.," pp. 343, 439. 

71 



THE HIGHER CRITICISM CROSS-EXAMINED 

Aaron's golden calf. Kuenen considers it proba- 
ble that the golden bull had, up to the days of 
the divided kingdom, always remained in vogue 
as a symbol of Jahveh. 1 The ark was an idol at 
first, 2 as were also the golden calves above men- 
tioned, Gideon's ephod at Ophra, and the brazen 
serpent which Moses set up in the desert. 3 

In one important particular their religion was 
even below the prevailing level, in that it was not 
indigenous. According to the critics, the Israel- 
ites were inveterate borrowers. They borrowed 
from the Assyrians the idea of the winged bull as 
a symbol of Deity ; they borrowed from Babylonia 
the Decalogue, the antediluvian patriarchs, and the 
creation and flood myths ; 4 they borrowed from 
Egypt the ark, the model of the temple, the priestly 
vestments and the Urim and Thummim ; 5 they 
borrowed from the Canaanites their sanctuaries 
and sacred tombs. Indeed the only things which 
the critics would not allow as coming under that 
head were the jewels of gold and silver and the 
raiment which they borrowed from the Egyptians 

1 Kuenen, "The Religion of Israel," Vol. I., p. 346. 

2 Wellhausen, "Proleg.," p. 189. 

3 Ibid., p. 283. It is strange that while the pentateuchal nar- 
rative is myth and invention when it is urged in support of the 
biblical theory, it suddenly acquires both historicity and eviden- 
tial force when needed for critical purposes. 

* Delitzsch, "Babel and Bible." 

5 Kuenen, "Religion of Israel," Vol. I., p. 275. 

72 



THE NEW HISTORY 



on their escape from bondage. That would be 
giving credit to the Exodus narrative, which of 
course would never do. 

On this plane the religious history of Israel 
started, and on this plane for many centuries it 
continued. As before stated, the Israelites were 
polytheists, or at best monolaters ; and their 
prophets were, with here and there an exception, 
troops of "drunken dervishes," and in later times, 
"miserable fellows who ate out of the king's hand 
and were treated with disdain by members of the 
leading classes." * When during the course of 
their history in Canaan they followed after strange 
gods — Moloch, the Baalim, and other Canaanitish 
deities — it was not a lapse from a purer faith 
supernaturally revealed at their very birth as a 
people, but a mere excursion into outside cults 
occupying the same level as their own — natural 
tributes of homage to the gods of the land in rec- 
ognition of their territorial rights, distinct from 
but not necessarily antagonistic to the rights of 
their own tribal deity. 

This condition of things obtained, without change 
or substantial improvement, until the days of the 
divided monarchy when, in the eighth century 
before Christ, the earliest of the writing prophets, 
Amos and Hosea, in some way developed higher 
" conceptions " of God — the antecedent stages of 

1 Wellhausen, p. 293. 

73 



THE HIGHER CRITICISM CROSS-EXAMINED 

which "development," however, are nowhere 
stated or so much as hinted at. But even this 
did not then carry with it the conviction of the 
utter nullity of idols or idol worship ; that point 
was not reached until the later times of Jeremiah 
and the Deutero-Isaiah. These higher conceptions 
of God — which seem to the common mind to have 
been in no sense such a development as the critics 
claim, but rather, from the critical standpoint, an 
absolute reversal of all preconceived ideas — finally 
culminated in the " ethic monotheism" of later 
Judaic history, which became thereafter the central 
article of their creed. 

During the exile the Levitical scribes, out of 
the remnants of old traditions and the memories 
of ancient rites and pre-exilic temple usages, com- 
piled and elaborated a system of laws to meet the 
exigencies of the new situation. Into this code 
they incorporated the book of Deuteronomy, dat- 
ing from the reign of Josiah, and on the return 
from exile in the days of Ezra this compilation, at 
once a theology and a ceremonial, was set up as 
the original charter of Israel, in the minute and 
punctilious observance of which their religion was 
thenceforward to consist. Thus the codifiers, 
seeking to frame a norm through which this newly 
evolved idea of the divine unity might be expressed, 
achieved an unlooked-for and disastrous result. 
They killed the prophetic impulse, and for the 

74 



THE NEW HISTORY 



living voice of God speaking through the prophets, 
substituted the iron trammels of a dead law. 1 So, 
as the event proved, the prophets, without mean- 
ing it, " were the spiritual destroyers of the old 
Israel." 2 The ultimate outcome was rabbinism 
and the endless puerilities of the Talmudists. 

Yet in this preposterous muddle of human pur- 
blindness and cross-purposes and topsyturvydom — 
as complete an instance of hysteron-proteron as 
could well be imagined — we are invited to see the 
working of a divine plan and the preparation for a 
fuller revelation of God in the incarnation of our 
divine Lord. It is not development ; it is catas- 
trophism in its most violent form. 

In this scheme, if such an incoherent medley 
can be called a scheme, we have progress and 
retrogression, elevation and degradation, elabora- 
tion and degeneration alternating with bewildering 
inconsequence — anything and everything rather 
than the measured and orderly march of an evo- 
lutionary process by the operation of self-contained 
forces from a lower to a higher level. Doubtless 
it requires great skill and dexterity to stand an 
inverted pyramid upon its apex and hold it there 
even for a brief space. The permanent stability 
of such a structure is quite another question. 

1 Robertson, "Early Religion of Israel," Vol. I., p. 37. 

2 Wellhausen, '■'Prolegomena," p. 491. 



75 



VI 

THE MUTILATED BOOK 



It is difficult, in reviewing the charges made against the 
sacred record and its authors, to avoid the impression that 
the critics, instead of analyzing the facts with which they 
profess to deal, and deducing from the analysis their theo- 
ries, enter upon the task under the bias of foregone con- 
clusions, to which the facts must be made to conform. 
Hence, the critical exigency and necessity of a reconstructed, 
or rather an expurgated Bible, if their theories are to have 
even the semblance of justification. If men of science 
were to frame their theories after this fashion, they would 
become a laughing-stock to the scientific world. And the 
writer is persuaded that when the glamour of literary renown, 
with which these theories have been emblazoned before a 
too credulous public, shall have been dispelled, as is being 
done by a riper scholarship, their authors, if heard of at all, 
will occupy a very humble position in the domain of biblical 
literature, whether of the Old Testament or the New. 

—Robert Watts. 



VI 

THE MUTILATED BOOK 

And it came to pass that when Jehudi had read three or 
four leaves, he cut it with a penknife, and cast it into the 
fire that was on the hearth, until all the roll was consumed. 

— Jeremiah. 

It is evident that a scheme of history such as 
that outlined in the foregoing chapter calls for a 
vigorous handling of the documents upon which it 
is supposed to be based. It is certain that, taken 
at their face value, they will yield no such result. 
Much will have to be read into them, more stricken 
out. While the critics are equal to either demand, 
the work of obliteration seems to be the more con- 
genial task. In fact, their achievements are reck- 
oned brilliant or commonplace, in exact proportion 
to their destructive ability. With such a standard 
of success, it is no wonder that, like some modern 
surgeons, they are vastly more concerned about 
the brilliancy of the operation than the welfare of 
the patient. In criticism, if not in forestry, a man 
is famous according as he has lifted up axes against 
the thick trees. 

A glance at the results will show that no com- 
plaint can be made as to the thoroughness of their 

79 



THE HIGHER CRITICISM CROSS-EXAMINED 

appetite and capacity for biblicide. The book of 
Genesis, to accept their estimate, is destroyed ut- 
terly. After they have done with it, it has no more 
historical value than "Jack and the Beanstalk." 
It maybe an object of interest to the antiquarian, 
or a cadaver for the student in comparative myth- 
ology to dissect ; but when common veracity goes, 
surely all claims to divine origin go also, and there- 
with its worth to the ordinary Christian as an 
authoritative utterance of the revealed truth. One 
critic, it is true, expatiates with great unction upon 
the priceless value of these fictitious patriarchal 
tales as themes for preaching, and their undying 
power on the heart, imagination, and faith of men. 1 
Much useful truth is inculcated, and many sound 
morals are pointed by "^Esop's Fables " ; but that 
fact would hardly justify their inclusion among 
the bases of a rational faith ; nor would they 
thereby commend themselves as invaluable, or 
even justifiable, subjects for homiletic treatment. 
If these records of God's dealings with the 
patriarchs — dealings in which we, according to the 
Apostle Paul, have a direct and vital interest — are 
without substantial verity, then his co-apostle Peter 
is wrong ; we have not the more sure word of 
prophecy, and we have followed cunningly devised 
fables. It is consoling to know, according to 
this critic, that we can without loss dispense with 

1 G. A. Smith, "Modern Criticism," etc., pp. 108, 109. 
80 



THE MUTILATED BOOK 



history at the terminus a quo of definite revelation 
— i. e. y the covenant with Abraham. But other 
critics of the same school make a like showing 
with regard to its terminus ad quern, claiming that 
we are as little assured of the facts in the life of 
the historic Jesus, as we are of the existence of 
the legendary Abraham. 1 The historicity of the 
intervening stages would seem, from these stand- 
points, to be of little moment. 

And it is manifestly so accounted by them ; for 
Exodus fares little better at their hands than did 
Genesis. The man Moses existed, and probably 
lived about the time of the exodus, if there was 
an exodus ; and led the Israelites out of Egypt, if 
they were ever there. But the lawgiver Moses and 
the laws he was supposed to give, are myths. 
They saw the light centuries later, under other 
skies and entirely different conditions. The legend 
attributing the Torah to Moses arose from the fact 
that he was the great kadi of the wilderness — 
the natural leader and magistrate of the scanty 
and unorganized horde of Goshen shepherds whom 
he had led out of Egypt, and of the Kenites, 
Amalekites, and other Sinaitic nomads who joined 
them at the oasis of Kadesh-barnea. Here Moses 
sat and dispensed justice substantially after the 
fashion recommended by his father-in-law Jethro, 

1 Julicher, " Introd. to N. T." Gardner, " Historic View of 
N. T." "Encycl. Biblica," art. "Gospels." 

F 8l 



THE HIGHER CRITICISM CROSS-EXAMINED 

and narrated in Exod. 18. And it was these 
oral decisions, and his instructions to the priest- 
hood, given from time to time as occasion re- 
quired, which constituted the only laws possessed 
by the Israelites during their desert sojourn. To 
this extent only can Moses be regarded as the 
author of the Torah. 1 And so, while such por- 
tions of the narrative as square with the critical 
reconstruction may be accepted as fairly trust- 
worthy historic tradition, the legislative portions of 
the book must be wholly rejected as a source from 
which our knowledge of Mosaism can be derived. 2 
Not even the Decalogue escapes ; 3 it being assigned 
to the reign of Manasseh. 4 The " fragments that 
remain " have little value except, as occasion 
serves, to enforce some derogatory point made by 
the critics. 

Deuteronomy is fashioned out of whole cloth 
seven hundred years after its purported date, and 
hidden by its author in the temple, to be discovered 
and sprung upon the young and impressionable 
king Josiah, at an opportune time in the interests 
of religion and reform. This was done, we are 
informed, by "adherents of the Mosaic tendency." 5 

1 Wellhausen, " Hist, of Israel and Judah" 3d ed., pp. 10 f. 

2 Ibid., pp. 17, 18. 

3 Ibid., pp. 20, 21. 

* "Proleg.," p. 486. Pfleiderer, " Development of Theol- 
ogy," P- 271. 

5 Kuenen, " Religion of Israel," Vol. II., p. 19. 

82 



THE MUTILATED BOOK 



But what the Mosaic tendency was, on the critical 
hypothesis, passes the wit of man to conjecture. 
The Israelite of the time of Moses was a polytheist, 
as he himself must have been, unless sadly derelict 
in duty toward his followers. As to whether the 
"opportunity for monotheism" had arisen at that 
early date, or was the product of later circum- 
stances, we are left in doubt. Being ignorant of 
what Mosaism really was, it is, of course, impossi- 
ble to know whether it was helped or hindered by 
the book that Hilkiah found ; which, by the way, 
was only the kernel of Deuteronomy as we have it. 
It needed two centuries more of tinkering to bring 
it to its completed form. 

Leviticus, with such of the narrative portions of 
the other books as are needed to bolster it up, is a 
fraud pure and simple ; deliberately fabricated, as 
to important elements of it without shadow of evi- 
dential or even legendary warrant, more than a 
thousand years after Moses by the priestly caste 
in the interests of their own order, to give the color 
of Mosaic origin and the weight of divine authority 
to a newly concocted code, designed to secure their 
own supremacy, and to enforce by its sanctions the 
burdens and exactions which they purposed to 
impose upon the returned exiles. 

The so-called historical books are not histories 
at all, but books of devotion, 1 whether liturgical, 

1 Cornill, "History of the People of Israel," Eng. tr,, p. 9. 

83 



THE HIGHER CRITICISM CROSS-EXAMINED 

or merely didactic or meditative we are not in- 
formed. Strangely enough, Wellhausen admits 
that they contain " really valuable historical notes." 
But lest we should be exalted above measure by 
this unprecedented critical tribute to the verity of 
the Scriptures, we are gravely cautioned that they 
are " largely mixed with anecdotic chaff " ; needing, 
of course, the sure instinct of the critic to tell us 
which is which. And we may be certain that 
every word which points to divine inspiration or 
intervention will be unhesitatingly referred to the 
latter class. 

The book of Psalms is the hymnal of the second 
temple ; l no psalm, our Saviour's ascription to the 
contrary notwithstanding, being of undoubted 
Davidic authorship, or belonging to the Davidic 
age ; but most of them having a post-exilic, or even 
Maccabean origin. And yet, modern as the Psalter 
is, the critics, on convenient occasion, can discern 
in it elements of the most ancient and primitive 
conceptions of Semitic heathenism. As, e. g. t 
when in the passage, "He shall be like a tree 
planted by the rivers of water, that bringeth forth 
his fruit in his season " (Ps. i : 3) Robertson Smith 
finds a "touch of primitive naturalism," having its 
origin in the superstitions of the early Semites 
which located the sanctuaries of the Baalim in 
fertile valleys and by deep watercourses ; or, again, 

1 G. A. Smith, "Modern Criticism," etc., p. 87. 
84 



THE MUTILATED BOOK 



when he connects the verse, " The sparrow hath 
found an house, and the swallow a nest for herself, 
even thine altars, O Lord of hosts " (Ps. 84 : 3) 
with the barbaric taboo which protected birds from 
molestation in the sacred groves of the local gods. 1 
Thus, it becomes ancient or modern according to 
the needs of the moment ; early when a word can 
be found which can be distorted into a recognition 
of heathenish rites or beliefs, late when exalted 
spiritual conceptions of God are involved. 

As to the writing prophets — for we are to dis- 
tinguish between them and Wellhausen's "drunken 
dervishes " and " miserable fellows " — their so- 
called works consist, to a quite considerable extent, 
of collections of anonymous oracles, sheltered un- 
der the aegis of well-known names to give them an 
authority which they would not otherwise possess. 
It is gratifying, however, to be certified that while 
modern criticism "has already removed from many 
of the prophets large portions of the books which 
bear their names " and a more thorough analysis of 
these books may " issue in further subtractions of 
the same kind," yet the constructive character of 
the process in question may be fearlessly asserted. 2 
One might wonder to what practical use the pro- 
phetic books could be put were it not that the 
same writer enlightens us. " We now perceive 

1 Robertson Smith, "Religion of the Semites," pp. 104, 160, 

2 Smith, Op. eU. % p. 217. 

85 



THE HIGHER CRITICISM CROSS-EXAMINED 

that their real value consisted in the indispensable 
preparation they provided " for eighteenth and nine- 
teenth century criticism ! x Which is rather a novel 
conception of the function of prophecy. 

The book of Daniel, instead of being the in- 
spired utterances of the great seer of the exile, is 
a religious novel of the days of Antiochus Epiph- 
anes, written, " we know the very day, almost," in 
the month of January, 164, b. c., 2 and falsely 
attributed to a man three hundred years dead, if 
he ever existed, but none the worse on that ac- 
count. 3 And so on through all the dreary cata- 
logue. With few exceptions, no book in its final 
shape is written by the author whose name it 
bears ; no historical statement is contemporaneous 
or indeed belongs at all to the period to which it 
refers, but the whole is an amorphous jumble of 
documents, compiled and recompiled, edited and 
re-edited, altered and transposed, mutilated and 
interpolated, diminished and supplemented by one 
and another manipulator to meet the exigencies of 
the particular scheme he has in hand, or to hearten 
and encourage the people in some emergency which 

1 Smith, Op. cit., p. 251. 

2 Cornill, " Prophets of Israel," Eng. tr., p. 177. It is to be 
presumed that, the necessity existing, criticism would be equal to 
the further task of deciding what kind of a day it was and what 
influence the prevailing meteorological conditions had upon the 
psychology of the book, a result which would be just as worthy of 
credit as the one reached, as above indicated by Professor Cornill. 

3 Dean Farrar : "The Book of Daniel." 

86 



THE MUTILATED BOOK 



has arisen, or some trial or peril through which 
they are passing. And these are the foundations 
on which the Christian edifice is erected. 

It is probably suggested at this point that the 
extreme features of the above summary can only 
be fairly chargeable against those terrible German 
radicals, and that no such hostile attitude charac- 
terizes the work of the moderate and cautious 
critics of the English school. Even if that were 
so, which is by no means clear, it is well that we 
should remind ourselves that the higher criticism 
is a progressive, not to say evolutionary, science, 
and that its appetite for destruction grows by what 
it feeds on. The conservative of yesterday de- 
velops into the moderate of to-day ; the moderate 
of to-day carries within him the "promise and 
potency" of the radical of to-morrow, and what the 
full fruitage of the process will be, time alone can 
disclose. One has traveled farther than the other, 
maybe, but they are both on the road, and vestigia 
nulla retrorsum is the badge of all their tribe. It 
is a far cry from Astruc in 1753, with his modest 
" conjectures "as to the documents used by Moses 
in his composition of Genesis, to Kuenen, Graf, 
and Wellhausen, with their dogmatic rejection of 
all Mosaic connection with pentateuchal legislation. 
And the end is not yet. Indeed one step forward 
has already been taken by the Frenchman, 
M. Vernes, who, carrying out the method to its 

87 



THE HIGHER CRITICISM CROSS-EXAMINED 

logical conclusion, not only discredits the author 
Moses, but wipes out the man Moses, as well as 
the prophets Samuel, Elijah, and Elisha, and places 
the origin of the Old Testament writings, law, 
prophets, and history alike, at a date subsequent to 
the return from captivity and the building of the 
second temple. At this rate of progress another 
half-century ought to see the whole Abrahamic 
race argued out of history and classed with 
" anthropophagi and men whose heads do grow 
beneath their shoulders," and such like creations 
of poetic fiction. True the existence of the mod- 
ern Jew might seem to present obstacles in the 
way of such a result. But he would not. It would 
only be so much the worse for him. The critic 
would explain him away. 

Even as the case stands to-day, the main differ- 
ence between the German radical and the English 
moderate is one of manner rather than of matter. 
The one smashes the vessel with a jeer, the other 
preserves an outward show of respect and does 
his breakages more gently. The one brushes the 
fragments contemptuously aside as an encumbrance 
gotten rid of, the other shows great anxiety to 
save the pieces, and even places a higher esti- 
mate upon the shattered potsherds than upon the 
unbroken pitcher. ■ 

The supercilious boast is made that modern 
criticism has won its war against the traditional 

88 



THE MUTILATED BOOK 



theories of the Old Testament, and that it only 
remains to fix the amount of the indemnity. This, 
rendered into plain English, means that criticism 
has been successful in its assault upon the Old 
Testament. The phrase " traditional theories " is 
pure surplusage, and is a typical instance of the 
favorite critical device of creating a prejudice 
against opposing views by the dexterous use of an 
injurious and unwarranted phrase. With just as 
much propriety might one talk of the " traditional 
theory " of Bancroft's " History of the United 
States," or of Motley's " Rise of the Dutch Re- 
public," meaning thereby that the reader, in good 
faith, accepted those works for what, in like good 
faith, they purported to be. 

If, however, the boast is well founded, one con- 
sideration is urgently commended to the notice 
of the critics. They should by all means write, 
or edit, or compile a new Bible, using perhaps 
such portions of the old documents as are not fatally 
discredited, and by addition, redaction, and exci- 
sion, giving us a scientifically developed account, 
so exact in its chronology and its statements of 
fact that not a loophole will be left open to the 
attack of the captious and the skeptical. 

Assuming that the new views are to prevail ; 
that the Christian revelation is still to be regarded 
as having its roots in an antecedent history ; and 
that the facts of that history are to be accepted as 

89 



THE HIGHER CRITICISM CROSS-EXAMINED 

established in accordance with the critical recon- 
struction, the necessity of such a book is hardly 
open to question. It would be well also if at the 
same time the Old Testament could be withdrawn 
from circulation, or at least decanonized. Unless 
some such state of affairs is brought about, one of 
two things will happen. Sooner or later the Chris- 
tian public will awake to the real nature of the 
issue — they will either reject the critics or they will 
reject Christianity ; for in the present condition of 
the record it is impossible that a full acceptance 
of the critical position and an unfeigned belief in 
revealed religion can permanently coexist. 



90 



VII 

THE NATURE OF THE EVIDENCE 



The value of an expert's evidence depends not merely on 
his exceptional acquaintance with the subject which he has 
made a specialty, but also on his capacity of concentrating 
attention and thought upon one particular element in an 
inquiry. This very habit, however, makes him impatient 
when others insist on taking a wider view than his own and 
giving due weight to considerations of a kind that he ignores. 
The very qualities, therefore, which constitute his value 
as a witness tend to unfit him for the position of a judge. 
Hence it is that no civilized community tolerates a tribunal 
of experts. _ sir Robert Anderson. 



The soundness of this principle is emphasized by every 
fresh attempt to ignore it. Witness the recent findings of 
the Board of Admirals who investigated the Dogger Bank 
incident 



VII 

THE NATURE OF THE EVIDENCE 

Let them bring forth their witnesses, that they may be 
justified. —Isaiah. 

Now the question arises : What are the evi- 
dences adduced in support of the amazing conclu- 
sions involved in the critical theory ? On an issue 
so vital, where so much that the Christian holds so 
sacred is at stake, the testimony ought certainly to 
be of the first class, undeniably competent, of a 
very high degree of probative force, capable of 
withstanding the most rigid tests, and so prepon- 
derating in weight as to admit of no alternative 
solution and to point irresistibly to but one con- 
clusion. He ought not to be asked, nor ought he 
be willing, to reverse the judgment of two thou- 
sand years, simply upon the balancing of proba- 
bilities or even upon the presentation of difficul- 
ties and apparent discrepancies in minor points 
where, from the mere lapse of time, so much must 
of necessity be left in impenetrable obscurity. He 
ought not to confound a plausible explanation of 
a difficulty with the logical demonstration of a 
fact. Much less ought he to admit as determining 

93 



THE HIGHER CRITICISM CROSS-EXAMINED 

factors in the problem, surmise, conjecture, theory, 
opinion, or, indeed, anything short of actual proof 
in its own sphere as valid as that which he would 
exact as to the title of a plot of land, or the facts 
upon which he was to be charged with a pecuniary 
obligation. 

It is, perhaps, contended here that this is setting 
up an impossible standard, and that it is unreason- 
able in an inquiry of this nature to expect proof 
amounting to a mathematical demonstration, or even 
such as would pass current as legal in a court of 
justice. That is to say, on a subject of the most 
momentous import the Christian is to surrender 
his faith in the authority of God's word, and to 
relinquish the brightest hopes ever held out to 
poor humanity, for reasons of a lower order than 
those required to prove a sum in arithmetic or 
substantiate the ownership of a bale of cotton. To 
the claim that it was the best that the nature of the 
case permitted, the response of common prudence 
would be : " Your best is not good enough." 

For when we inquire as to the degree in which 
the considerations advanced by the critics satisfy 
the requirements above mentioned, we find that it 
is only by a loose and inexact use of language that 
many of them can be called proofs at all. We are 
told that no external evidence worthy of credit ex- 
ists, * although the indications are that the biblical 

1 Driver, "Introd.," etc., ioth ed., p. II. 
94 



THE NATURE OF THE EVIDENCE 



account may not be so barren of external support 
as the critics would have us believe, strange to 
them as the assertion may seem to be. The same 
writer informs us that the case depends entirely 
on internal evidence. 

The phrase is an imposing one : it has a com- 
fortably satisfying ring about it, and it seems to 
import the ascertainment of facts by processes so 
exact as to leave no doubt and no uncertainty 
about the result. But what is internal evidence ? 
It is one branch of what is known to the law as 
expert testimony. Its sphere ostensibly includes 
the determination of the date, authorship, com- 
position, purpose, etc., of documents or works of 
literature from the data furnished by their struc- 
ture, contents, or character. It really amounts to 
the opinions, or what might often be more appro- 
priately termed the guesses, of the experts on the 
subject. The law rightly names it "opinion evi- 
dence," and places a very low estimate upon its 
value. It is only within a comparatively recent 
period that it has been regarded as admissible for 
any purpose. It has never held an assured posi- 
tion as an instrument for eliciting truth. In the 
Tracy Peerage Case in the English House of 
Lords (10 Clark and Finnelly, 184), where there 
was a discussion as to the genuineness of certain 
ancient documents, Lord Chancellor Campbell, in 
speaking of a certain titled expert, said : 

95 



THE HIGHER CRITICISM CROSS-EXAMINED 

I dare say he is a very respectable gentleman and did 
not mean to give any evidence that was not true ; but really 
this confirms the opinion I have entertained that hardly any 
weight is to be given to the evidence of what are called sci- 
entific witnesses. They come with a bias on their minds to 
support the cause in which they are embarked. 

And subsequent legal history has not tended to 
impair, but rather to confirm and strengthen the 
views of this high judicial authority. Indeed, the 
comments of modern jurists on the subject, in the 
actual administration of the law, are frequently 
couched in terms less calculated to save the feel- 
ings of the experts. That it has a useful place of 
its own and a proper sphere is not to be denied ; but 
that place is a lower one and that sphere much 
more limited than the critics accord to its opera- 
tion. Its function is at best adminicular — i. e., in 
support, explanation, or corroboration of other ele- 
ments of proof ; and when it is elevated from that 
comparatively lowly office, and the entire burden of 
a case is sought to be put upon it, then its inherent 
weakness becomes at once manifest. 

Its usefulness in any event is precisely condi- 
tioned upon the presence of certain concurrent 
requisites. Where, for instance, knowledge of the 
language concerned is exact and comprehensive ; 
where a large outside body of authentic literature 
exists to serve as an admitted standard of com- 
parison ; where there is substantial agreement as 

96 



THE NATURE OF THE EVIDENCE 



to the antecedents and tendencies of the period 
which is the subject of inquiry, and where the 
contemporary history is fully known, resting upon 
an unimpeachable foundation of established facts, 
so that it may be used both as a guide and a 
touchstone, then internal evidence may with profit 
be resorted to in the absence of direct extraneous 
proof of the precise point in hand, and it may re- 
solve difficulties and clear up obscurities, and may, 
perhaps, with a greater or less degree of proba- 
bility, furnish grounds for passing upon disputed 
questions of authorship. 

At its best estate, however, certainty cannot be 
predicated of its results. A notable instance may 
be found in the discussion which raged for more 
than a century over the authorship of the Junius 
letters. That was a case where, if ever, the proc- 
ess of deduction from internal evidence ought to 
be capable of establishment as a true scientific 
method. Every condition which would aid in fur- 
thering such a result was present. The text of 
the documents was beyond question, for the 
original manuscripts were at the service of the ex- 
perts. The investigation commenced contempora- 
neously, a large circle participating in it, while the 
interest it excited was uniyersal, so that the rele- 
vancy or the truth of every scrap of evidence 
could be at once tested by common knowledge. 
The historical and personal allusions in the letters 
g 97 



THE HIGHER CRITICISM CROSS-EXAMINED 

were of such a character and imported such inti- 
mate knowledge in certain directions as to confine 
the scope of the inquiry within a small compass. 
The literary style of the author possessed such 
strongly marked characteristics and was withal of 
such unusual ability and distinction as fairly to 
preclude the idea that this was his only essay in 
literature, thus, in effect, further narrowing the 
limits of the investigation. The indications in the 
letters of the writer's mental and moral qualities 
were numerous and illuminative. In short, every 
conceivable element favorable to a correct solution 
of the problem — philological, literary, historical, 
and personal — was present in profuse abundance. 
And yet, what was the result ? Uncertainty so 
complete that more than a century later so sound 
a literary critic as the late Abraham Hayward 
writes : " The authorship of the letters remains a 
mystery, and Stat Nominis Umbra is still the 
befitting motto for the title page." 

And if it be so in the green tree, what must it 
be in the dry ? Contrast the foregoing with the 
conditions confronting the critics in their attempted 
application of the internal evidences furnished by 
the documents constituting the sacred record. 
The language itself belongs to a dead and buried 
past, so remote that its idioms and usages and the 
meaning of many of its phrases are largely matter 
of conjecture. As said by a renowned Orientalist, 

98 



THE NATURE OF THE EVIDENCE 



" We know so little Hebrew that the simplest cor- 
rection of a biblical text is a hazardous undertak- 
ing." 1 Even the vocalization of its words was for 
centuries preserved only by oral tradition, 2 while 
the grammar of the language did not become an 
object of study until the ninth century of our era. 
There is no other extant Hebrew literature of the 
period covered by the biblical record, consequently 
no outside standard of comparison ; nor is there 
any Israelitish history save that which forms a 
part of the same record. There are therefore no 
extraneous facts to which we may refer either as 
guide or touchstone. Add to this the gulf of three 
thousand years which yawns between the critics 
and their quarry ; take into account the scanty 
and inadequate indications which survive as to the 
social and economic conditions, the habits, the 
allusions, the daily life of that far-off time ; then 
estimate the underlying probability of reaching 
any assured result in an attempt not only to 
reconstruct the history on lines radically diver- 
gent from the prima facie showing of the biblical 

1 Professor Margoliouth. 

2 It is worthy of note that while tradition is accepted as con- 
trolling in the matter of' vowel pointing, no weight whatever is 
allowed to it on any other subject. To be consistent, the critics 
should take the consonantal skeletons and spell out the vocaliza- 
tion for themselves de novo — on strictly internal evidence. It is 
an exhibition of weakness on their part to use tradition for any 
purpose whatever, except perhaps as the derivation of an oppro- 
brious epithet to throw at their opponents. 



LcyfC. 99 



THE HIGHER CRITICISM CROSS-EXAMINED 

narrative, but also to separate the narrative itself 
into a chaos of fragments, identified and dated, 
written centuries apart in different countries by an 
anonymous host of authors, compilers, forgers, 
and redactors. The fabled " cocksureness of Lord 
Macaulay about everything " pales into insignifi- 
cance beside the quasi-omniscience which assumes 
such an achievement. 

Are the critics dismayed by the magnitude of 
the undertaking or embarrassed by the scantiness 
of the materials ? Not a whit. They feel them- 
selves fully equal to the task ; and they are relieved 
by the paucity of the evidence. What your true 
critic most likes is a free field and no facts. Then 
he can produce really brilliant critical work, ar- 
ranging his facts to suit his theory and adducing 
his theory to prove his facts. 

The fallible nature of this kind of proof is exem- 
plified in some curious results of the critical ex- 
amination of the internal evidence drawn from the 
books of Moses. One of the supposed sources of 
those writings is the so-called priestly code. Some 
critics of the school most in favor to-day hold it 
demonstrated beyond a doubt that it is the latest 
portion of the Pentateuch, composed during or 
since the exile, more than a thousand years after 
Moses. Other critics of equal eminence, applying 
the same apparatus criticus to the same production, 
assert with just as much positiveness that it is the 

IOO 



THE NATURE OF THE EVIDENCE 



oldest part, the grnndschrift> or foundation writing 
of the whole. A document which at the same time 
exhibits marked signs of extreme age and equally- 
marked indications of comparative youth, must 
certainly be a most extraordinary production. 

One critic, again speaking of the same priestly 
code, commenting on the dry formalism of its 
style and its " incredibly matter-of-fact statements," 
says : " Everywhere we hear the voice of theory, 
rule, judgment." Its legends are "dry wood, cut 
and made to a pattern with, compass and square." 1 
Another critic of the same school regards the 
priestly writer as a gifted poet, who in his " vision 
of creation " gives us the opening stanzas of a great 
epic of humanity, colossal in conception and pro- 
found in insight. 2 

One critic (Dillmann) speaks of the priestly 
writer's style as " juristically precise and formal, 
its language somewhat stiff and monotonous " ; 
another (Ewald) dwells on its "peculiar fresh, poetic 
air," its "perfection and beauty," its "lucidity and 
quiet transparency," and its " florid style of de- 
scription," and says in particular that the epic 
strains above referred to " may serve as a clear 
specimen of all subsequent ones." 3 It is prob- 
ably reserved for some remote future generation to 

1 Wellhausen, "Proleg.J* etc., p. 361. 

2 G. A. Smith, "Modern Criticism," etc., p. 93. 

3 Sinker, "Higher Criticism," p. 43. 

IOI 



THE HIGHER CRITICISM CROSS-EXAMINED 

discover lyrics and pastorals concealed within the 
pages of " Abbott's Legal Forms " and " The United 
States Revised Statutes." 

Instances of this kind, and they are by no means 
rare, give point to the remarks of Doctor Wharton, 
the great legal text writer : 

Not only do they give us, however positive may be their 
assertions, probable proof as distinguished from absolute 
demonstration, but when we weigh their testimony we find 
that we have to add to the doubt incident to all probable 
proof a new set of doubts as to the authority of the several 
experts. * 

Professor Smith " points with pride" to the 
fact that a large body of critics, working on inde- 
pendent lines, recognizes the existence of four main 
sources in the Pentateuch, and argues therefrom 
the scientific character of the conclusions reached. 
But Dillmann, one of the critics cited, names three 
sources, and Strack, another German critic of 
eminence, identifies five; and in any event the 
consensus of opinion is only as to their number, 
while, as above shown, there is wide divergence as 
to their date, origin, and significance ; so the agree- 
ment is not so intimate as to be startling. 

Even in a narrower circle, where unanimity does 
exist, many will attribute it, not to the cause as- 
signed by him, but to the fact that the critics are 

1 Wharton on "Criminal Evidence," Sec. 9. 
102 



THE NATURE OF THE EVIDENCE 



adepts at the game of "Follow my Leader." 
Professor Von Orelli gives a much more probable 
explanation of the phenomenon than does Professor 
Smith. In his introduction to Herr Moller's 
recent work, "Are the Critics Right?" he says: 

Nothing is more astonishing to me than the readiness 
with which even diligent explorers in this field attach 
themselves to the dominant theory, and repeat the most 
rash hypotheses as though they were part of an unques- 
tioned creed. 

If they plow with Samson's heifer the unanim- 
ity of the answers which they give to Samson's 
riddle, while it may be gratifying to themselves, is 
scarcely surprising to others. As well might we im- 
agine the last of a flock of sheep claiming as a 
fact that, acting on independent judgment, the 
whole of the flock unanimously chose the same 
gap in the hedge as a more desirable way of en- 
trance into the turnip field than the open gate. 
Bell-wethers are not confined to ovine circles. 



103 



VIII 
INTERNAL EVIDENCE 



It stands to reason that any process which professes to 
take to pieces the mechanism of a book and to assign its 
several component parts to totally different ages must be 
exceedingly precarious and open to very grave suspicion. 
Any one who should attempt to do the same for the great 
literary monuments of Greece and Rome would find but 
little favor. And it surely must be evident that the like 
process, when applied to the books of the Old Testament, 
cannot be less precarious or uncertain in its results. 

— Stanley Leathes. 



VIII 

INTERNAL EVIDENCE. 

They are their own witnesses. 

— Isaiah. 

That the evidence relied on by the critics is of 
the precarious character suggested in the last 
chapter is abundantly shown by the history of the 
higher criticism during the last hundred years. 
One hypothesis has arisen, has had its day of tri- 
umph and has fallen, only to be superseded by 
another and another, some borrowing features of 
their predecessors, but carrying them on to unim- 
agined issues ; others rejecting most that had gone 
before and striking into entirely new lines — the 
"document theory," the "fragmentary theory," 
the " supplementary theory," the " crystallization 
theory," the "development theory," and a host of 
others, some of them variants of earlier ones too 
erratic to range themselves under a descriptive 
title and therefore known by no name save that 
of their originator. And the same "internal 
evidence " stands sponsor for them all. 

What can be said of the soundness of a line of 
reasoning which readily lends itself in succession 
107 



THE HIGHER CRITICISM CROSS-EXAMINED 

and with equal apparent conclusiveness in each 
case to such a jumble of incongruities as is repre- 
sented in the foregoing enumeration ? A class of 
proof sufficiently elastic to cover and "conclu- 
sively demonstrate " them all is surely a confirma- 
tion of the homely adage, "what is good for 
everything is good for nothing." 

The truth is, that when there are no contempo- 
rary records to act as a check, and no possibility of 
a reference to extrinsic facts of any kind as a test 
of accuracy, internal evidence has been made to do 
yeoman service in support of all manner of incon- 
sistent and mutually destructive hypotheses ; but 
where there is opportunity to measure these the- 
ories by standards of known fact, the result has 
frequently been utter failure. An instance of this 
latter sort is given by Professor Margoliouth, of 
Oxford, in his " Lines of Defense of the Biblical 
Revelation." A document called the Cairene 
Ecclesiasticus was discovered between 1896 and 
1900, and accepted by all the leading Hebraists as 
a work of the second century before Christ, the 
period during which the existing Greek and Syriac 
translations were produced. In reality, the pro- 
fessor states, it is shown to be a work of the elev- 
enth century a. d., compiled from those two 
translations, and he concludes : " In differing about 
the date and analysis of Hebrew documents from a 
school which could be deceived for a day by this 
108 



INTERNAL EVIDENCE 



document, and could spend a year in defending it, 
I do not seem to myself to be incurring any seri- 
ous risk." l And from the standpoint of common 
sense the professor's confidence would seem to be 
justified. 

To repeat, the determination, say, of the authen- 
ticity of documents on internal evidence from style, 
presence of time indications, etc., is a somewhat 
uncertain process. A not impossible case might 
be put which would make even a higher critic 
question the conclusiveness, if not the validity, of 
such evidence. Let us suppose a testator with an 
unsuspected liking for quaint expressions. He 
makes a holographic will devising to the critic a 
valuable estate in "free and common socage." 
There is no proof of the testator's handwriting, 
and the attesting witnesses die before him, leaving 
but secondary evidence of the execution of the 
will. That happens to be of an unsatisfactory 
character, and the court rules the critic out of his 
inheritance "on internal evidence," holding that 
the will is not shown to be a contemporary docu- 
ment, the term "free and common socage" hav- 
ing gone out of use since the early years of the 
eighteenth century. But the response is : " That 
would not be common sense. No sane judge 
would put such a decision upon such a ground." 
Precisely so. But what a higher critic would do, 

1 "Lines of Defense," etc., p. 309. 
109 



THE HIGHER CRITICISM CROSS-EXAMINED 

nay, has done in analogous instances, is another 
question. 

A friend suggests that the illustration just given 
is not in point, because, first, the presence of an 
archaism in a document would be to higher critics 
no proof of antiquity, but the rather that it was 
inserted by a later hand for purposes of decep- 
tion ; and secondly, that none of them was ever 
known to seek an earlier date for a document 
when a late one was any way possible. And 
there may be force in these suggestions. Let us 
take an illustration to which there can be no such 
objection. 

In the works of a great English author are to 
be found the lines : 

You are their heir, you sit upon their throne ; 
The blood and courage that renowned them 
Runs in your veins. x 

According to the critical methods, these lines 
contain strong internal evidence that they were 
written after the promulgation by Harvey of his 
discovery of the circulation of the blood. And 
yet they were published when the latter was but 
a youth, before he had made the choice of medi- 
cine as a profession, while his celebrated dis- 
covery was not made known until the poet was in 
his tomb. 

1 "King Henry V.," Act I., Sc. 2. 
no 



INTERNAL EVIDENCE 



Once more, in the works of the same writer 
these lines occur : 

The strong base and building ot my love 
Is as the very center of the earth, 
Drawing all things to it. x 

Internal evidence again, of the very strongest 
kind, that the passage was subsequent to the fall 
of the apple, which led the great philosopher to 
his conception of the modern theory of gravita- 
tion, inasmuch as it exactly states one feature of 
it. But Shakespeare died twenty-six years before 
Sir Isaac Newton was born, and nearly a century 
before the publication of his immortal " Prin- 
cipia." True, the movement of the blood in some 
sort may have been known in a vague and general 
way before Harvey, as also the effect of gravity 
before Newton, and the great dramatist's title to 
his seemingly prophetic utterances is secure. But 
carry the incident back to biblical times. Let 
Harvey and Newton figure as priestly scribes of 
the exile and Shakespeare as a pre-exilic prophet. 
Can any one doubt that the critics would have 
found in these two passages confirmation much 
stronger than holy writ either that Shakespeare was 
post-exilic, or that the unscrupulous redactor had 
been at his old tricks of interpolation, by which he 
projected late conceptions into earlier times ? They 

"Troilus and Cressida," Act IV., Sc. 2. 
Ill 



THE HIGHER CRITICISM CROSS-EXAMINED 

would be wildly wrong ; but must it not be admitted 
that it is a fair replication of many of the grounds 
upon which they base their conclusions ? The late 
Laurence Sterne once observed that some men rise 
by the art of hanging great weights upon small 
wires. If the science of the higher criticism had 
existed in his day, one would surely have thought 
that he had its processes and results in mind ; in- 
deed, a plausible case might be made out that the 
aphorism quoted contains "internal evidence" that 
the " science" in question did exist and was referred 
to by the humorist. 

The minute literary analysis to which every page 
of the Old Testament has been subjected by such 
critics as Canon Driver, for instance, may stand in 
the eyes of an admiring following as a monument 
to their erudition and industry. It may even be, 
as claimed by Professor Smith, one of the most 
thorough intellectual processes of our time, and 
when its results are "done in colors," a dazzling 
picturesqueness may be added to its other excel- 
lencies. This elaborate treatment, Professor Sayce 
explains, is rendered possible by the limited field 
in which the analysts work. He says : " It is not 
difficult to learn by heart every word and gram- 
matical form in the Hebrew Scriptures, or to count 
the number of instances in which the same idioms 
and phrases occur." ■ But while the painful minute- 

1 "Lex Mosaua," p. 5. 

112 



INTERNAL EVIDENCE 



ness of the process or its intellectuality, if you will, 
is apparent enough, what of its probative signifi- 
cance ? Ancient Hebrew, Doctor French inti- 
mates, has little or no chronology, nor can early 
and late be with safety predicated of any phrase, 
or even word, that is not post-exilic. * Style and 
contents, therefore, must be the main if not the 
only reliance. And the idea that with these only 
for a guide, any critic or any number of critics, by 
any kind of microscopic dissection and inter- 
comparison of writings of vast antiquity, in a 
tongue but imperfectly known, can determine 
their authorship with such nicety as to assign the 
beginning of a verse to one writer, the middle to 
another, and the end to a third, 2 and can identify 
the second of two contiguous fragments as added 
ten years after the first, 3 is a pretension so fatuous 
that in no field save the " science of the higher 
criticism " would it receive a moment's considera- 
tion. A level-headed man of affairs called upon 
to form conclusions as to any question affecting 
his politics, pocket, or pursuits with " internal evi- 
dence," similar to that put forward by the critics, as 
his only base for decision, would brush the tissue of 
cobwebs contemptuously aside as something too 
fantastic for a grown man to waste his time over. 



1 Valpy French, in '■''Lex Mosaica" p. 126. 

2 Sayce, in "Lex Mosaica," p. 4 f. 

3 Sinker, "Higher Criticism," p. 71. , 

H 113 



THE HIGHER CRITICISM CROSS-EXAMINED 

The successful accomplishment of such a feat 
as the critics claim to have achieved would tax the 
powers of the mystic spectacles by which the Mor- 
mon prophet deciphered and translated the "re- 
formed Egyptian " inscriptions on the gold plates 
buried by the angel Moroni on the hill Cumorah. 

A visitor at the sanitarium of a celebrated alienist 
was conducted through the grounds by an intelli- 
gent and entertaining guide, who discoursed in an 
interesting manner upon the various phases of 
insanity as illustrated by the delusions of the 
patients whom he pointed out, and whose peculiar- 
ities he described. In the course of his conver- 
sation he remarked, referring to a man who was 
stalking gloomily along one of the pathways : 

" There is one of the strangest cases we have. 
That man is under the delusion that he is Alex- 
ander the Great." 

"That is very interesting," said the visitor. 

" But he is not Alexander the Great," continued 
his guide. 

" Of course not ! " was the natural response. 

" But I have reasons for knowing that which you 
cannot possibly have," he persisted. 

" Indeed, and how can that be ?" 

" I, sir, am Philip of Macedon." 

It was not to be gainsaid that he, if any one, 
ought to be accepted as an authority on the subject 
of the identity of his famous son. 
114 



INTERNAL EVIDENCE 



One is " tempted to conjecture " that, like Philip 
of Macedon, the critics " must have reasons for 
knowing, which we cannot possibly have." Eso- 
teric sources of information inaccessible to the rest 
of the world can alone account for the telescopic 
and microscopic definiteness with which they parcel 
out, date, and locate the component particles — 
many of them are too minute to be called parts — 
of these ancient documents down to the last jot 
and tittle. The only wonder is that they have not 
discovered and supplied the names of the several 
anonymi " on internal evidence." 

We are further told that the modern criticism of 
the Old Testament is based on the presence of 
"doublets" or duplicate accounts of the same 
events in the historical books ; x and that a valid 
inference of separate authorship may be drawn 
from differences in style and vocabulary of these 
two-fold narratives. The professor gives an in- 
stance. He says : " The passages which use Elo- 
him speak of him as creating the world, and talk of 
the beasts of the earth ; the passages which usually 
employ the name Jahweh speak of him as making 
or forming the world, and talk of the beasts of the 
field." l Hence, the conclusion that the two ac- 
counts were written by different men, as it is 
inconceivable that the vocabulary of any one man 

1 G. A. Smith, "Modern Criticism," p. 33. 

2 Ibid., p. 35. 

115 



THE HIGHER CRITICISM CROSS-EXAMINED 

would be equal to the strain of supplying the 
recondite synonyms cited ! 

It is an odd coincidence that the treatise from 
which the above passage is quoted contains at 
least one instructive example of the " doublets " 
mentioned. It too bears all the critical earmarks 
which are supposed to import a dual authorship — 
both statements deal with the same subject-matter, 
one speaks in the plural and the other in the singu- 
lar number, one in the present and the other in 
the past tense ; the words used differ, the form and 
grammatical construction of the two are wholly 
unlike ; in the first, the facts are stated in two short 
sentences, in the second, the entire statement is 
comprised within one complex sentence, and there 
are even indications of redactorial additions, as well 
as of the presence of the two main " sources." 

The " doublet" is as follows: In the second 
lecture on " The Course and Character of Modern 
Criticism," we read : " We may say that Modern 
Criticism has won its war against the Traditional 
Theories. It only remains to fix the amount of 
the indemnity." 

In the third lecture on " The Historical Basis in 
the Old Testament " the statement is : "I said 
that the battle of modern criticism with the tradi- 
tional theories of the Old Testament had been 
fought and won ; and that it only remains to discuss 
the indemnity." 

116 



INTERNAL EVIDENCE 



Now, if the saying of the same thing in two 
different ways denotes dual authorship, then it is 
plain that these two accounts are by different 
hands. We may go further and say that there are 
strong reasons for supposing that the first writer 
is from the northern and the second from the 
southern kingdom. The indicia are too marked 
to be deceptive. The racial characteristics of the 
first are clearly apparent. The caution of the 
Scot and his liking for indirect statements are seen 
in the avoidance of the first person singular, and 
the use of the phrase "we may say" ; the Celtic 
impulsiveness which leaps hastily to a conclusion 
manifests itself in the boast that the whole " war " 
is over ; the capitalization of the names of the two 
contesting principles illustrates the Gaelic passion 
for prosopopeia ; while its northern origin is even 
more strikingly evinced by the canniness and keen 
eye for the main chance, betrayed in its solicitude 
as to " fixing the amount " of the indemnity. 

It is equally clear that the second half of the 
doublet saw the light south of the Tweed. Com- 
pare its blunt, dogmatic " I said " with the cautious 
" we may say " of its predecessor ; note the com- 
paratively modest term " battle " used by the mat- 
ter-of-fact Englishman in his care not to go beyond 
the record in his claims, and also the lack of a 
direct statement as to who is the victor in the con- 
flict ; and, finally, the elimination of the commer- 
ii7 



THE HIGHER CRITICISM CROSS-EXAMINED 

cial element in the matter of the indemnity, he, 
no doubt, considering it more consonant with the 
dignity of the subject to " discuss " it, than to " fix 
its amount." 

One is " tempted to conjecture " that the second 
account originally stood "a battle has been won " ; 
but that the inevitable redactor seeing an apparent 
discrepancy between the statements of the north- 
ern and the southern writers, the one speaking of 
a war, and the other of only a battle, harmonizes 
things by the substitution of the definite, in place 
of the indefinite article ; and further amplifies the 
second account with the detail "fought and," as 
well as the explanatory addition "of the Old 
Testament." 

To the question why he confined his emenda- 
tions to the latter document, leaving the first un- 
touched, the answer is plain. It is simply a way 
he has. The redactor never acts as an ordinary 
man would under the circumstances ; with him it 
is always the unexpected that happens. 

This doublet by no means stands alone ; and yet, 
"internal evidence" to the contrary notwithstand- 
ing, Professor Smith would doubtless resent the im- 
putation that " Modern Criticism and the Preaching 
of the Old Testament " was a compilation. 



118 



IX 
THE HISTORICAL EVIDENCES 



The modern historians have refused to call the books of 
the Pentateuch as evidence ; they have eliminated those 
' ' summaries ' ' of the history which are overlaid on the his- 
torical books and we have accepted them. And then, when 
their own witnesses step into the box and are expected to 
bless the modern theory, they curse it altogether. And this 
by no forced cross-examination on the part of those who 
were to be confuted by them, but by spontaneous, straight- 
forward statements ; and forthwith those who called them 
proceed to tell us that the evidence is to be taken with res- 
ervation ; for later additions have been made to the testi- 
mony, and these must be removed before we can get the 
true statement of the case. Nay, these prophets themselves, 
even when we get at their own words, are not to be relied 
on for matters of fact when they tell us that other teachers 
taught the same truth before them ; nor for their statements 
of history when they declare that their nation had been 
taught a better religion and had declined from it Where 
is the fixed point and firm standard by which we are to 
reach the truth ? The historical books are to be corrected 
by the aid of the prophetical ; but where is the standard for 
correcting the prophetical books ? On what authority are 
these ' ' insertions ' ' to be removed ? By what guide are 
we to adjust the prophetic misapprehensions ? The only 
"fixed" thing perceivable is the theory itself; the only 
standard is "strike out" or "I consider." For the rest, 
what may be called by admirers a delicate process of criti- 
cism, may appear to others uncommonly like a piece of 
literary thimble-rigging. —James Robertson. 



IX 

THE HISTORICAL EVIDENCES 

They have made void thy law. 

— Psalms. 

But we are told by Professor Smith that the 
criticism of the Old Testament is mainly histor- 
ical ; and that, although use is made of the argu- 
ment from language and style, it occupies a sub- 
ordinate and comparatively unimportant position, 
being " only corroboratory of a conclusion reached 
independently, and upon the evidence of the sacred 
history itself/' And he warmly repels the charge 
that modern criticism is dependent upon the pre- 
carious methods of literary analysis, claiming to 
have amply demonstrated that the main conclusions 
of the critics are based upon historical evidence 
derived from the Old Testament itself. * 

It may be said incidentally that this is a strange 
assertion in view of the contents of such a book 
as Canon Driver's " Introduction to the Literature 
of the Old Testament," which seems to be accepted 
by the prevailing school as an authoritative epitome 
of the " assured results of criticism." That book 

1 Smith, Op. cit., pp. 52, 56. 

121 



THE HIGHER CRITICISM CROSS-EXAMINED 

in the main consists of just this precarious literary 
analysis, of which Professor Smith speaks so slight- 
ingly, and to which he attaches so little weight. 
As said by one of its eulogists, " The Presbyterian 
Quarterly," " Every phrase, every clause, word by 
word, is sifted and weighed, and its place in the 
literary organism decided upon." Assuming that 
the philological argument is the negligible factor 
that Professor Smith makes it out to be, what was 
the distinguished Oxford professor doing ? Killing 
time ? Picking black oats from white ones, the 
device by which inmates of English penal institu- 
tions used to be saved from the dire consequences 
of enforced idleness ? Surely, if nothing of pri- 
mary importance was to be established by all this 
exhaustive dissection and analysis he has labored 
in vain, and spent his strength for naught. 

It must in justice be said that Canon Driver 
does not concur with Professor Smith in his ex- 
alted opinion of the merits of historical criticism ; 
nor does he share his views as to the uncertain 
character of literary criticism. He says in the 
preface to his " Introduction to the Literature of 
the Old Testament," " I readily allow that there 
are some critics who combine with their literary 
criticism of the Old Testament a historical criti- 
cism which appears to me to be unreasonable and 
extreme." 

Which view is the ordinary man to accept ? 
122 



THE HISTORICAL EVIDENCES 



Perhaps both ; and to agree with Canon Driver in 
his estimate of the unreasonable and extreme 
character of historical criticism ; and with Pro- 
fessor Smith in his views as to the little weight to 
be attached to results reached by the " precarious 
methods of literary analysis." 

But we should not take Professor Smith's refer- 
ence to the argument from style too seriously. In 
litigation it is frequently the case that a defendant, 
while denying that he is properly in court, or that 
jurisdiction has been acquired over him or over 
the subject-matter of the action, yet finds it desir- 
able to contest some step taken by the opposing 
party. His counsel therefore appears "for the 
purposes of this motion only," and is thus enabled 
to effect his immediate object — opposition to some 
inconvenient application — and at the same time 
prevent his appearance from subjecting his client 
to the jurisdiction of the court, or indeed from 
having any binding effect outside the limits of that 
particular motion. One is " tempted to conjecture " 
that this denial of dependence upon literary analysis, 
in answer to the charges of the conservatives, is 
"for the purposes of the motion only" ; and that, 
notwithstanding this disclaimer, the "argument 
from philology " will, when occasion serves, be 
found bearing its full share of the burden of the 
critical case. l In fact, the very lecture from which 

1 As, e.g., Driver's "Introduction," etc. 
123 



THE HIGHER CRITICISM CROSS-EXAMINED 

the above-mentioned dictum is quoted contains a 
passage wherein Professor Smith gives to the philo- 
logical evidence a significance which altogether 
overrides and renders nugatory the historical testi- 
mony. 1 But that is an instance in which the latter 
tends strongly to uphold the truth of the biblical 
narrative ; so, probably, the critics would not con- 
sider it a case in point. 

In support of the asserted reliance upon the 
facts of Old Testament history as a basis for the 
critical conclusions, we are cited to the existence 
of ''doublets" of the kind referred to in the pre- 
ceding chapter ; one from Genesis, others from 
Joshua, none from the books relating to the period 
covered by Moses* life and activity. As to the 
" doublets " in Genesis, their presence is in nowise 
derogatory to the claim of Mosaic authorship for 
the Pentateuch. The fact that, as to an earlier 
period, he used ancient records as the groundwork 
of his narrative, has, to the ordinary mind, nothing 
whatever to do with the authenticity of the history 
and legislation comprised within his own time, and 
with which he had an intimate personal connec- 
tion. And certainly the idea that duplicate ac- 
counts of what happened after his death could 
have any bearing upon the integrity of the record 
of his own life is one which could occur to no one 
save a higher critic or a resident of Bedlam. 

1 Smith, Op. cit., p. 63, and note. 
124 



THE HISTORICAL EVIDENCES 



It is necessary at this point to inquire precisely 
what is meant by the allegation that the critical 
conclusions are based upon historical facts derived 
from the Old Testament itself, confining our atten- 
tion for the moment to the scriptural narrative 
from the time of Samuel onward, at which time, 
according to the critics themselves, "we at last 
enter real and indubitable history." 1 Does it 
mean that we are to take it as a sufficiently accu- 
rate, chronological account of the events with 
which it deals, entitled therefore to credence as 
sober history ? Are the facts therein stated, in 
their entirety, those upon which the critical theory 
is founded ? Not by any manner of means. 

In all the pre-exilic narrative, upon the critical 
hypothesis, there is not one word of history, in the 
strict sense of the term, from beginning to end. 
It is not even original tradition. Speaking of the 
books of Judges, Samuel, and Kings, Wellhausen 
says, " We are not presented with tradition purely 
in its original condition ; already it is overgrown 
with later accretions." And these second-hand 
traditions, with independent narratives incorporated 
here, and offshoots and parasitic growths spring- 
ing up there, " have finally been uniformly covered 
with an alluvial deposit by which the configuration 
of the surface has been determined." 2 Of course, 



1 Smith, Op. cit., p. 77. 

3 Wellhausen, "Proleg.," p. 228. 

125 



THE HIGHER CRITICISM CROSS-EXAMINED 

before this amorphous conglomerate can be avail- 
able for critical purposes this " alluvial deposit " 
must be removed, the additions, offshoots, and 
parasites separated from the main narrative, and 
the whole sorted, dated, and appraised, such por- 
tions as fit into the scheme being retained, while 
the residue is " cast as rubbish to the void." 

So that the "sacred history itself," upon which 
Professor Smith claims to rely, is that history ex- 
cised, mutilated, and eviscerated, turned upside- 
down and inside-out, and robbed of every vestige 
of a claim, not only to divine authority, but to 
ordinary everyday human credibility. And this is 
the inevitable outcome of the process ; for it must 
be borne in mind that it is of the essence of the 
critical position that, with exceptions unimportant 
so far as the early religion of Israel is concerned, 
these narratives were written at so late a date as 
to deprive them of any possible force as historical 
statements. Naturally, when " facts " are manipu- 
lated after the fashion indicated, the residuum can 
be made to prove anything and everything. 

A typical example of this method of handling 
the facts is instanced, and its true character ex- 
posed, by Valpy French, in "Lex Mosaica." It is 
to be remembered that the exigencies of the theory 
imperatively demand that the tabernacle of the 
congregation as the precursor of the temple must 
be regarded as the invention of the forgers of the 
126 



THE HISTORICAL EVIDENCES 



priestly code — an afterthought ; something which 
never had any real existence. The Aaronic priest- 
hood also, with its hereditary succession in the 
direct line, was, from the same necessity, the crea- 
tion of later ages, Aaron himself being a fictitious 
person who, even at the time of the oldest writ- 
ing, the so-called Jehovistic narrative, say five 
hundred years after Moses, "had not yet made 
his appearance." * 

We nevertheless find direct evidence of the es- 
tablishment of this tabernacle at Shiloh in the 
period covered by the book of Judges, it being 
there spoken of as the " house of the Lord at 
Shiloh " ; which is in turn identified with the " tab- 
ernacle of the congregation " and " the temple of 
Jehovah " in the first book of Samuel, at which 
point, according to Professor Smith, "we at last 
enter real and indubitable history." It is spoken 
of in the seventy-eighth Psalm as " the tabernacle 
at Shiloh, the tent which he placed among men " ; 
and the critics cannot be heard to deny the Davidic 
age of that psalm, in view of the use they them- 
selves make of the argument from silence. The 
prophet Jeremiah too, whose testimony one might 
suppose even the critics would accept, says, speak- 
ing in the name of the Lord, " My place which 
was in Shiloh where I caused my name to dwell at, 
the first." Surely, if any fact could ever be estab- 

1 Wellhausen, p. 354. 

127 



THE HIGHER CRITICISM CROSS-EXAMINED 

lished by biblical testimony, this fact was. But 
Doctor French shows what a small chance for life 
a fact has when it stands in the way of a critical 
theory. He says, " The critics dispose of the evi- 
dence. As the prototype of the temple of Solomon, 
Shiloh was the culminating fraud of the priestly 
code, a successful afterthought ; in fact, in the Judges 
1 there is no mention of the tabernacle. It has not yet 
appeared.' Having struck it out of the text, Well- 
hausen— surely not seriously— observes, < So that the 
principal mark of the priestly code is wanting ' ! " * 
One of the references to the tabernacle in 
First Samuel, above cited, Wellhausen finds to be 
" badly attested, and from its contents open to 
suspicion." The latter clause of this condemna- 
tion is understandable, for the passage in question 
is decidedly inimical to the critical theory, and 
therefore from his point of view " open to suspi- 
cion." It is " badly attested " because it does not 
appear in the Septuagint, although, strange to say, 
in another place and with another point to make, 
Wellhausen draws an entirely different conclusion 
from a similar state of facts, deeming it probable 
that "the omissions of the Septuagint are due to 
an attempt to remove difficulties which has not 
quite attained its end." 2 An illuminative exhibi- 

1 "Lex Mosaica," p. 133 f. 

2 Robertson Smith, ''Old Testament in Jewish Church," 
p. 431, 2d ed. 

128 



THE HISTORICAL EVIDENCES 



tion of the scientific exactness and unvarying sta- 
bility of the rules governing " the most thorough 
intellectual process of the age." Why the unpur- 
posed omission of the passage in question is not 
at least as reasonable an hypothesis as its inten- 
tional interpolation into the Masoretic text is not 
apparent. It is " open to suspicion " that if the 
passage had favored the critical theory its absence 
from the Septuagint would have formed no bar in 
the way of the critics founding an argument upon 
it, even if they would have thought it worth while 
to mention the fact of its omission. In a footnote 
Doctor French says : " Mr. Cave rightly suggests 
that the critics, to be successful, will have to relegate 
First Samuel to the days of Ezra." 1 He need be 
under no misapprehension ; when the necessity is 
perceived the evidence will be forthcoming. 

But further, in this same book of Judges, we 
find Phinehas, the son of Eleazar, the son of Aaron, 
ministering before the ark of the covenant (Judg. 
20:28). " This," continues Doctor French, "is 
not a welcome passage to the critics. Wellhausen 
admits that it 'points rather to the priestly code,' 
but as this cannot possibly be allowed, he deter- 
mined that the clause is a gloss." 2 Doctor French 
further says that Kuenen reluctantly allows it to 
have weight as testimony. He does not mention 

1 "Inspir. of the Old Testament," p. 269. 

2 "Lex Mosaica^ p. 140. 

I 129 



THE HIGHER CRITICISM CROSS-EXAMINED 

that, before doing so, the latter takes care to rob 
it of all possible value by remarking : " It is yet to 
be determined how far this account is worthy of 
credit." ! Colenso stigmatizes it as an interpola- 
tion which " has manifestly been inserted by some 
priestly writer who could not endure that the 
people should ask counsel of Jehovah except 
through the intervention "of an Aaronic priest. 2 

These instances have been dwelt on in some 
detail merely as specimens of the wanton and 
reckless manner in which the evidence of the 
" sacred history itself " has been warped and dis- 
torted and its probative value assailed by the 
" historical criticism " upon which Professor Smith 
lays so much stress. If but a tithe of the counts 
in the critical impeachment of the integrity of the 
holy Scriptures is well found, then they are value- 
less for any purpose. No sound conclusion of any 
sort can be based upon them. 

But the illogical attitude of the critics in this, 
as in other matters, is well shown by Professor 
Robertson in some trenchant comments on Stade's 
" Geschichte der Volkes Israel" which are never- 
theless of general application : 

A remark may be made at the outset [says Professor 
Robertson] on the peculiar manipulation of the "sources" 
in his argument. Writers of Stade's school are never tired 

1 Kuenen, " Religion of Israel," Vol. I., p. 315. 

1 Colenso, "Lect. on the Pent.," p. 245. 
130 



THE HISTORICAL EVIDENCES 



of repeating that written documents give us certain informa- 
tion only in regard to the period at which they are composed. 
They declare at the same time that we have no authentic 
written documents before the eighth or ninth century b. c. 
These documents, therefore, ought only to be taken as evi- 
dences of the religious conceptions of that period, and yet 
Stade relies on them for proof of the religious beliefs of 
Israel at the time of and even long before the time of Moses. 
This he does, however, only when he finds elements giving 
countenance to his own theory, for the moment that a writer 
of this period gives his testimony to the biblical theory his 
evidence is discredited as a modern reading of old facts, or 
even a later interpolation of a redactor. To such straits are 
writers of this school reduced that they have to employ dis- 
credited works to build up their own theory. 1 

Well may so renowned a critic as Dillmann, by 
many esteemed the ablest and most learned leader 
of the German critical movement, 2 say of Robert- 
son that "he hits the nail on the head." For if 
the passage just quoted is not an exact and ex- 
haustive characterization of the critical modus 
operandi it would be difficult to find one in all the 
literature of the subject. 

Perhaps the full beauty of the method can be 
best illustrated by translating it in terms of actual 
present-day life. An action is brought in one of 
our courts to which the critic is a party. On the 
trial he first undertakes, elaborately and effectually, 
to impeach the credibility of the main, indeed the 

1 Robertson, " Early Religion of Israel," Vol. I., p. 228 f. 

2 Wace, " Bible and Modern Investigation, " p. 45. 

131 



THE HIGHER CRITICISM CROSS-EXAMINED 

only, witness in the case, and then proceeds to sup- 
port his own contentions by such shreds and 
patches of this discredited testimony as tell in his 
favor, rejecting the remainder as unworthy of 
belief or even consideration. 

It is needless to say what would be the outcome 
of such a litigation. 

Or, to vary the illustration, let us suppose a 
counsel learned in the law addressing the court 
somewhat after this fashion : 

May it please the court : We desire to offer in evidence 
some records on which we propose to rest our case, but 
before so doing we would ask the attention of the court to 
some preliminary explanations as to our line of proof. 

These records are of varying degrees of authenticity. 
Few of them, it may be at once admitted, were written by 
their reputed authors or were in existence at the time of 
their alleged date. Even those whose authenticity is con- 
ceded have been from time to time subjected to alteration 
and addition, excision and revision by successive editors 
of differing tendencies to suit the purposes of their sev- 
eral schemes. Some of the more important ones, which 
purport in large part to be contemporaneous records and 
which seem to set out a circumstantial and connected state 
of facts, apparently chronological and orderly in form, are 
nevertheless late compilations of different documents pro- 
duced centuries apart, and finally brought together and 
consolidated into one instrument more than a thousand 
years afterwards. Nor are they to be taken as evidence of 
the facts therein alleged, according to their prima facie 
showing. On the contrary, paradoxical as it may seem, 
events therein recorded and relied upon as fact by the other 

132 



THE HISTORICAL EVIDENCES 



side we shall prove never to have occurred, and yet to be 
sufficiently existent to be adduced in support of our conten- 
tions. As, to cite an instance, the brazen serpent set up by 
Moses in the wilderness. This, we shall claim never ex- 
isted, and yet we may find it desirable to bring it forward 
as evidence of the idolatrous beliefs and practices of the 
Israelites of the Mosaic age. 1 

It will doubtless appear to the court that with the record 
in this condition no certain conclusions of any kind can be 
drawn. But we think that from the theory we have evolved 
as to the course which events must have taken during the 
period covered by our inquiry, and from our careful exami- 
nation and analysis of the documents in question, and our 
deductions as to the spuriousness, and our consequent 
elimination therefrom, of the elements which conflict with 
this theory, we shall be able to present an intelligible, 
coherent, and harmonious state of facts ' ' derived from the 
sacred history itself/' which will commend itself to the 
favorable consideration of the court, to whose judgment we 
confidently submit our case. 

Would he be allowed to get to the end of his 
screed ? Can it be for a moment conceived that any- 
one other than a born fool would have the temerity 
to go into court on such an errand and with such 
a plea ? 

It will probably be objected that it is absurd 
to suppose that a philosophical inquiry of the 
nature and scope of the one under consideration 
could possibly be confined within the rigid limits 
of and be conducted in compliance with the tech- 

1 Wellhausen, "Pro teg.," p. 283. 
133 



THE HIGHER CRITICISM CROSS-EXAMINED 

nical formalities usual in a legal proceeding. And 
perhaps that is so. But it may be said that, not- 
withstanding the shallow satire expended upon the 
"red tape" and formalism of the law, if the inves- 
tigation and discussion of the questions involved 
in this controversy could by any means be made 
even to approximate the orderliness and impar- 
tiality with which legal inquiries are conducted, 
with legal forms observed and legal rules govern- 
ing the relevancy and competence of testimony 
enforced, and legal requirements as to the burden 
of proof and the weight of evidence insisted on, the 
process would attain a sanity and a sobriety which 
it has not hitherto exhibited and its conclusions 
would command a general respect immeasurably 
greater than has yet been accorded to them. 



i34 



THE UNEQUAL BALANCES 



Passages were quoted from Amos and Hosea as imply- 
ing an acquaintance with the priestly code, but they were 
not such as could make any impression on those who were 
already persuaded that the latter was the more recent. 

— /. Wellhausen. 



The modern theory is strong in minute analysis, but weak 
in face of controlling facts. It will laboriously strain out a 
gnat in the critical process of determining the respective 
authors of a complex passage ; but when it comes to a real 
difficulty in history, it boldly swallows the camel and wipes 
its mouth, saying, "I have eaten nothing." 

— James Robertson. 



X 

THE UNEQUAL BALANCES 

Thou shalt not have in thy bag divers weights, a great 
and a small. —Deuteronomy. 

This mutilation of the record and manipulation 
of the facts are not the only features of the crit- 
ical programme to which a fair-minded man would 
naturally take vigorous exception. He complains, 
and has a right to complain, that the scales are not 
held true, even with respect to the scanty mate- 
rials which the critics have left unchallenged as a 
valid basis for decision, and to the necessary con- 
clusions deducible therefrom. 

Arguments which are accepted as irresistibly 
cogent when used for weapons of attack, somehow 
seem to lose all their force when employed for pur- 
poses of defense. A rule is laid down and rigor- 
ously applied — pushed even to extreme limits — 
where an injurious inference is possible ; but when 
a like rule is invoked which tends in the opposite 
direction, either it is ignored altogether, or airily 
avoided as without significance ; or else a dexter- 
ously vague admission is made for purposes of 
rejoinder only, to be subsequently deprived of 

i37 



THE HIGHER CRITICISM CROSS-EXAMINED 



all effect when the general question comes to be 
affirmatively considered. 

For instance, in the book of Ecclesiastes there 
is a passage : " A bird of the air shall carry the 
voice, and that which hath wings shall tell the 
matter." This, we are told, is a manifest allusion 
to the cranes of Ibycus ; l although the certainty 
of the allusion is by no means as manifest to the 
ordinary reader as it was to Professor Momerie, the 
reference apparently pointing just as strongly to 
the modern device of using carrier pigeons as mes- 
sengers. It was, however, plain to him, and the 
inference he draws is that the book could not have 
been written before the rise of the Greek legend 
in the fifth century. And many critical conclu- 
sions as to the late date of documents are founded 
on just such inferences. 

But although it is pointed out that the books of 
the prophets are steeped and saturated in the lan- 
guage of, and throughout presuppose the institu- 
tions embodied in the law, which, from the necessi- 
ties of their theory, did not see the light for cen- 
turies thereafter, the works of the critics will be 
searched in vain to find a frank acknowledgment 
of the fact, or any admission that they raise a 
somewhat formidable question. 

These references are neither scanty nor ambigu- 
ous ; on the contrary, they are abundant, precise, 

1 Momerie, "Agnosticism," p. 170. 

138 



THE UNEQUAL BALANCES 



and comprehensive. In his valuable work, " The 
Law in the Prophets," Prof. Stanley Leathes has 
collated the passages in question, and they are 
found to comprise the repetition of significant and 
distinctive phrases used in the several books of the 
Pentateuch, and nowhere else ; plain and unmis- 
takable references to historical incidents recorded 
there, and nowhere else ; exact quotations of whole 
sentences of substantial import found in the Pen- 
tateuch, and nowhere else ; and profuse, clear, and 
definite allusions to sacrificial and ritual language, 
feasts, and institutions, inhibitions, statutory enact- 
ments, and social regulations set out and prescribed 
in the Pentateuch, and nowhere else} 

Now, it would seem that all this wealth of cumu- 
lative testimony presents an impregnable case for 
the priority of the written law. In any other field 
of investigation, a position supported by such a 
chain of evidence would be deemed to be estab- 
lished beyond a peradventure. And indeed, here, 
if the question were the other way about, and 
the exigencies of the critical case demanded that 
the law should precede the prophets, it would not 
be difficult to imagine the contemptuous scorn 

1 A compendious and judicious selection of some of the more 
important passages from the prophetic and historical books, with 
corresponding references to the Pentateuch may be found in Dr. 
A. J. Rowland's useful manual, "The Pentateuch," at pages 
22-24. Of- a ^ so tne weighty considerations on this head ad- 
vanced by Keil in his "Introduction to the Old Testament" 
(Eng. tr.), Vol. I., pp. 165-174. 

139 



THE HIGHER CRITICISM CROSS-EXAMINED 

with which the critics would overwhelm any one 
who dared deny or minimize the convincing force 
and effect of the concurrent lines of proof above 
enumerated. 

On analogous grounds, slighter, however, in many 
cases, they have decided that the later prophets 
were close students of and intimately acquainted 
with the writings of their predecessors, of which 
they made free use, incorporating them in their 
own utterances without acknowledgment. Indeed, 
for reasons not hard to understand, they are astute 
to find evidence of positive quotations in mere 
general similarity of statement, fairly referable to 
identity of subject-matter and standpoint. 

But these reiterated testimonies of the prophets 
to the pre-existence of the Mosaic law, touching 
as they do, directly or indirectly, almost every im- 
portant element, and referring to every book of the 
Pentateuch with sufficient particularity to give 
point and certainty to the allusion, what effect do 
they give to them ? Virtually none. For the most 
part, this phase of the subject is altogether ignored, 
or dismissed as unimportant, with here and there 
an incidental reference. Wellhausen dismisses it 
in a sentence of charming candor, and one which 
throws a valuable light on critical methods and 
processes. He says : " Passages were quoted from 
Amos and Hosea as implying an acquaintance with 
the priestly code, but they were not such as could 
140 



THE UNEQUAL BALANCES 



make any impression on those who were already 
persuaded that the latter was more recent." 1 

This mode of dealing with evidence, although even 
more radical in form, is akin to the one announced 
by the famous Western jurist : " I shall hold this 
case under advisement for about two weeks, but 
shall eventually decide it in favor of the plaintiff/' 
It might well be called, " Wellhausen's Short and 
Easy Method with Traditionalists." Its effective- 
ness in burking and otherwise getting rid of incon- 
venient evidence is unsurpassed and unsurpassable. 

Kuenen, however, is an exception, He deals with 
it in some detail, although without reference to 
many of the passages relied on by Doctor Leathes. 2 

Occasionally, as in the case of Canon Driver's 
" Introduction," an attempt, more ingenious than 
ingenuous, is made to forestall and discount the im- 
plications of these awkward facts. That writer in 
effect says that the " supposition " is that the 
institutions of Israel are in their origin of great 
antiquity ; but that the laws respecting them were 
gradually developed and elaborated, and in their 
final shape are post-exilic. 3 And he argues truly 
enough : " From this point of view, the allusions 
to priestly usage in the pre-exilic literature may be 
consistently explained." 4 

1 "Pro/eg.," p. II. 

■ Kuenen, "The Hexateuch," pp. 174-186. 
9 "Introduction," etc., p. 142. 4 Ibid., p. 143. 

141 



THE HIGHER CRITICISM CROSS-EXAMINED 

Most assuredly. Indulge in suppositions enough, 
and let " supposition " and "demonstration" be 
regarded as convertible terms, and no case could 
be put which would be so wildly impossible but 
that it could be "consistently explained." 

Assume that as it stands the Pentateuch is a 
dislocated and misleading puzzle-picture, and that 
to be of value it must be, as it has been, cut to 
pieces and readjusted on different lines by the 
critics, with all the joints and seams showing ; 
assume that the first is the last and that the last is 
the middle ; assume that with the art of writing 
known and practised for centuries, a creed, a sys- 
tem of morals, a code of laws, and a ritual came 
into being, and a history ran its course without 
written records or initial legislation ; assume that 
centuries later some shadowy traditions of remote 
events, more or less historical, with some fragments 
of anonymous legislation were severally reduced to 
writing no one knows when, by no one knows whom, 
and finally gravitated to, and found a lodgment in 
the temple archives no one knows how ; assume 
that centuries later still, long after much of it had 
become obsolete and inoperative through lapse of 
time and change of circumstance, this hetero- 
geneous amalgam of myth, folk lore, history, law, 
and ritual was elaborately codified to give to the 
priesthood inapplicable instructions and to lay 
upon them out-of-date injunctions, obedience to 
142 



THE UNEQUAL BALANCES 



which was a physical impossibility ; assume that 
codification means, not what the lexicographers say, 
the arrangement and reduction to order of existing 
laws, but that it has an elastic signification and 
means indiscriminately the collection, retention, 
alteration, or abrogation of such old laws and the 
creation of new and radically different ones, with 
the invention of a "parenetic framework" to. fit ; 
assume that not one of the many scribes who had 
a hand in the piecemeal production wrote with a 
single eye to setting forth the facts as they were, 
but that each had ulterior, and generally sinister, 
motives, which motives are writ large upon the 
record ; assume that the residue of the Old Testa- 
ment is of equal value, either as being of like 
dubious origin, or as having been subjected to sim- 
ilar transforming processes ; assume that the phrase 
" all critics are agreed " has the force of an axiom ; 
and assume, finally, that all these assumptions, in- 
stead of being mere guess and surmise, the pro- 
jections of a vivid imagination, are sound conclu- 
sions based on valid premises ; and then, without 
doubt, " from this point of view " everything that 
militates against the completeness of the critical 
case "may be consistently explained" — consist- 
ently, that is, with the theory. That the explana- 
tion should consist with the facts as they were, 
matters little or nothing. 

Our author proceeds : " They (i. e. y the allusions 

H3 



THE HIGHER CRITICISM CROSS-EXAMINED 



to priestly usage) attest the existence of certain 
institutions ; they do not attest the existence of the 
particular document in which the regulations touch- 
ing those institutions are now codified." 

Laying aside for the moment " suppositions, '' 
critical and other, it may be said that this claim is 
based upon a curious misconception of the office 
and limitations of proof. Taking the word "at- 
test " in its natural meaning of " giving testimony 
to," it is surely a revolutionary application of the 
laws of evidence to assert that these allusions do 
not furnish some evidence tending to establish the 
existence of the documents, to the contents of 
which they apparently pointed. 

Now if there were to be found in the pages of 
some modern author a statement to the effect that 
of all cants the cant of criticism is the most tor- 
menting, the ordinary reader would at once con- 
clude that the author had read " Tristram Shandy," 
and that the passage in question was, although in 
abridged form, a quotation from that whimsical ex- 
travaganza. But according to the critical methods, 
this conclusion would be entirely unwarranted. 
It would merely exhibit " traces of pre-existing" 
views and indicate that at that or some earlier 
period there were prevalent — floating in the air, so 
to speak — opinions not altogether favorable to 
critics, critical methods, and criticism generally. 

It is to be borne in mind that these references 
144 



THE UNEQUAL BALANCES 



in the "pre-exilic literature" are by no means 
confined to priestly usage ; they cover a much 
wider field, as has been already shown. With the 
pentateuchal legislation, for instance, is incorpor- 
ated a historical narrative, so closely interwoven 
that the history and the law cannot be riven apart 
without doing violence, not only to the record 
itself, but also to every rule of common sense and 
common fairness in dealing with historical docu- 
ments. 1 Does the " supposition " evolved by the 
critic afford grounds whereby the historical allu- 
sions in the prophetic books " may be consistently 
explained " ? Hardly in any event ; surely not in 
the face of a perfectly obvious and natural expla- 
nation, and one which would be at once accepted 
as decisive in any other controversy where evidence 
and proof meant something more than forms which 
shift with every turn of the kaleidoscope. 

And the foregoing is equally applicable to the 
case of the multitude of prophetical repetitions 
and quotations of distinctive pentateuchal words 
and phrases above referred to. Nor is it perceived 
how the critical " supposition " mentioned can 
avail, in any impartial mind, to nullify the cumu- 
lative testimony they give to the existence of a 
body of written law of which the prophets made 
lavish use, upon which they based their warnings 
and exhortations, and whose ancient date and 

1 Kuenen, "The Hexateuch," p. 32 (marg. paging, 35). 
K 145 



/ 



THE HIGHER CRITICISM CROSS-EXAMINED 

divine authority they themselves fully recognized, 
confidently counting on and appealing to a like 
attitude on the part of their hearers. 

Doctor Driver follows with the citation of pas- 
sages illustrating the references to " priestly 
usage," whose evidential force he seeks so indus- 
triously to destroy. The list, by the way, might 
have been indefinitely extended ; but few as his 
references are, one of the examples he gives seems 
to be singularly inappropriate for the purpose he 
has in view. The case instanced is that of the 
vow of the Nazarite. He cites a passage from 
Numbers (which he assigns to the priestly writer) 
containing the law of the Nazarite ; passages from 
Judges giving a concrete example of the law in oper- 
ation, and one from Amos containing a definite 
allusion to one of the provisions of the law. And 
he says of these passages {inter alia) that they are 
proof that the institution in question was ancient in 
Israel, but not that it was observed with the precise 
formalities prescribed in the priestly code. 

The prescriptions in Numbers, so far as they 
affect the votary himself during the continuance 
of his vow, are few and simple, while they are 
definite and precise. They enact that when one 
shall vow a vow of a Nazarite to separate himself 
unto the Lord he shall drink no wine or strong 
drink, and there shall no razor come upon his 
head, that he shall be holy, and shall let the locks 

146 



THE UNEQUAL BALANCES 



of the hair of his head grow until all the days of 
his separation be fulfilled. 

Some centuries later than the purported date of 
this law we have an account of a Nazarite, Samson, 
given in the early annals of Israel. In the narra- 
tive all the above-mentioned prescriptions of the 
so-called priestly code are present, couched in the 
very terms of the law itself ; the separation unto 
the Lord, the abstinence from wine or strong drink, 
the injunction to let the hair grow, with the pro- 
hibition of the use of the razor. Some centuries 
later still the prophet Amos complains of the chil- 
dren of Israel that although the Lord had raised 
up of their young men to be Nazarites, yet they 
"gave the Nazarites wine to drink." 

Now it is difficult to see why this is not evi- 
dence, and pretty good evidence too, that both 
prophet and historian wrote in view of the Mosaic 
legislation quoted, and that this legislation then 
existed in its present form, inasmuch as both in 
the enactment in Numbers and the narrative in 
Judges substance, phraseology, and order exactly 
coincide. So that in this one instance at least 
the institution whose existence even the critics 
admit "was observed with the precise formalities 
prescribed in P." 1 

It is true that Samson did not present himself 
to the priest according to the " precise formalities 

1 Driver, " Introduction," etc., p. 143. 
147 



THE HIGHER CRITICISM CROSS-EXAMINED 

prescribed in P " to be observed upon the expira- 
tion of time or other sooner determination of the 
days of separation, but that was hardly his fault. 
After his locks had been shorn by Delilah, thus 
nullifying his vow and bringing it to an abrupt 
period, there can be little doubt that he would 
gladly have appeared before the door of the taber- 
nacle of the congregation with the prescribed 
offerings. But unfortunately he was a prisoner, 
blind and bound, and making sport for the Philis- 
tines at Gaza. These provisions, therefore, being 
inapplicable to his case, the omission to mention 
them in the narrative in Judges, ought surely not to 
be held as evidence of their non-existence, although 
the argument from silence has, on occasion, been 
pushed by the critics to quite as extreme limits. 

It is clear that the prophets would have had to 
quote the Pentateuch entire before the critics 
would admit their testimony in support of the 
claim that it existed in their day. It is doubtful, 
indeed, whether even that would suffice. Thus 
Doctor Driver notes many parts of the earlier 
books of Moses which are paralleled in Deuter- 
onomy — in particular an important passage in the 
latter book, giving a list of clean and unclean 
beasts which to a large extent is verbally identical 
with one in Leviticus. And the inference he 
draws is, not as would naturally be supposed, that 
the one is a quotation from the other, but that it 
148 



THE UNEQUAL BALANCES 



is probable that both are divergent recensions of 
an unspecified and unknown original, 1 for whose 
existence there is not and never has been the 
shadow of a warrant. Could the force of ingenuity 
further go ? At one breath they destroy the in- 
tegrity of a document which has weathered two 
thousand years of attack, and at the same time 
create out of nothing a brand new " source," the 
tenor of which they may, no man forbidding them, 
change, augment, or diminish at will to meet the 
varying needs of their case as they arise. 

The plain man, with his weakness for the ob- 
vious and the normal, stands helpless in the pres- 
ence of such thaumaturgic dexterity as this. A 
certain document refers to John Smith, and what 
is said of him answers fairly well to the description 
of the man he knows by that name. But he is 
told that although John Smith is mentioned, it does 
not mean John Smith, but some other Smith whom 
no one has ever seen or heard of, and whose person- 
ality is as shadowy and unsubstantial as the John 
Doe of legal fiction. If the discussion were on 
any other subject, especially if it affected his per- 
sonal welfare, he would at once insistently respond : 
" Produce your fugacious double or account for 
his non-appearance, or at least give us some proof 
that he ever existed at all and what has become of 
him." But in this forum where the voices only 

1 Driver, "Introduction," etc., pp. 144, 145. 
149 



THE HIGHER CRITICISM CROSS-EXAMINED 

of the pundit and the professor may be heard, he 
is awed into a silent, if dubious and unwilling, 
acquiescence by the twin bogies of science and 
scholarship. 

A typical example of the manner in whicn the 
critics minimize by adroit handling the effect of 
adverse texts is to be seen in their treatment of 
the passage in Hosea which has heretofore been 
regarded as showing that in his time, at least, a 
substantial body of written law was in existence. 

The Authorized version translates the passage : 
" I have written to him the great things of my 
law" (Hos. 8 : 12). The Revised version gives : 
" Though I write for him my law in ten thousand 
precepts " ; with the marginal alternate : " I wrote 
for him the ten thousand precepts of my law." 
Ewald, writing thirty years ago, before the exilic 
origin of the priestly code became the primary 
article of the critical creed, renders the passage 
(or his English translator does for him) : " I write 
for him by myriads my doctrines " ; and says 
that the genuine Israelitish, Mosaic laws at that 
time had been very generally reduced to writing. 1 

Wellhausen, who cannot endure that aught but 
oral tradition and priestly praxis should be in ex- 
istence at that early date, makes it read : " How 

1 Ewald, "Prophets of the Old Testament," Eng. trans., 
Vol. I., pp. 265, 271. 

I50 



THE UNEQUAL BALANCES 



many soever my instructions may be " ; * and 
Driver simply refers to it as the " Torah " of Jeho- 
vah, which it was the office of the priests to in- 
culcate and uphold. 2 George Adam Smith only 
mentions it in such a way as to suggest the infer- 
ence that no such writings existed. His version 
is : " Were I to write for him by myriads my laws, 
as those of a stranger would they be accounted." 3 
For this reading he resorts to the Septuagint, of 
whose authors he had previously said that some of 
their mistranslations are outrageous, not only in 
obscure passages where they may be pardoned, but 
even where there are parallel terms with which 
they show themselves familiar. 4 Such as it was, 
however, it suited his purpose better than the 
Masoretic text. 

It is submitted that this is not the attitude of 
men who are endeavoring simply to get at the 
truth, but rather of strenuous advocates so domi- 
nated by their own prepossessions as in effect to 
say : " We have a theory to defend, and whatever 
appears to support it, is sure to be true " ; 5 and 
conversely. 

1 Wellhausen, "Proleg.," etc., p. 57. 

8 Driver, " Introd.," p. 305. 

3 G. A. Smith, "Book of the Twelve Prophets," Vol.1., 
pp. 278, 221. 

* Ibid. 

5 Andrew Lang, "Myth, Ritual, and Religion," Vol. II., 
p. 364. 

151 



XI 

THE ARGUMENT FROM SILENCE 



The assumption that non-mention or silence is equivalent 
to denial, is groundless. Abundantly as "the argument 
from silence" is employed, no assumption is more thor- 
oughly disproved by human experience. It forms an es- 
sential part of the denial of the Hexateuch narrative. Well- 
hausen and Kuenen never weary of saying that such a 
writer "knows nothing" of some matter. A rapid but not 
exhaustive glance over the pages of Kuenen' s Hexateuch 
detects the phrase or its equivalent occurring thirty-four 
times. Occasionally it is added that there is silence where 
mention might be expected. But who knows what might 
be expected of any writer ? Silence often occurs in connec- 
tion with the best known facts ; and abundant cases in point 
are furnished by those who have given it any attention. 
Illustrative facts could be cited indefinitely. There is no 
more precarious assumption for an argument 

— Samuel Colcord Bartlett. 



XI 

THE ARGUMENT FROM SILENCE 

Making the ephah small, and the shekel great 

— Amos. 

This inherent vice of the critical method is 
nowhere more apparent, or more conspicuously 
unfair, than in the validity which it claims for and 
denies to the argument from silence according as 
it tells in favor of or militates against the theory 
which holds the field for the time being. 

The nature of that argument is thus stated by 
Professor Margoliouth : 

The argument from silence represents the following series 
of syllogisms. Had B existed in the time of the author A, 
the latter must have known of B. Had A known of B, he 
must have mentioned or cited B. But A neither mentions 
nor cites B. Therefore B did not exist in A' s time. 

And he comments thereupon in this wise : 

It is clear that this argument involves two assumptions 
which are not always capable of demonstration. Human 
action is characterized by fitfulness, whence it is not abso- 
lutely certain that a man will perform an act which he may 
be well expected to perform. Hence, while knowing of B, 
he may for some unknown reason fail to mention B. Or, 

155 



THE HIGHER CRITICISM CROSS-EXAMINED 

though the chance of his having failed to hear of B may be 
exceedingly small, it is often difficult to deny the admissi- 
bility of such a chance. 1 

Or, to put it bluntly, the argument from silence 
is not worth the paper it is written on. Some- 
times the conclusion happens to be true, and some- 
times not ; but when it does, it is not because 
it necessarily follows from the premises. In 
other words, it is largely matter of guesswork ; 
and when there is guessing to be done, most men 
prefer to do it for themselves. 

But, notwithstanding the inconclusive character 
of this argument, and its consequent worthlessness 
from a logical point of view, great dependence is 
placed upon it by the critics, and sweeping conclu- 
sions are drawn from it. Indeed, there is scarcely 
a phase of the subject in which it has not been 
pressed into service in some form or other. Only, 
however, when it tends to give a fancied support 
to critical attacks on the integrity of the Scriptures ; 
for all other purposes the critics themselves would 
be the first to recognize its fallacy. 

Doctor Watson, in "Lex Mosaica" at page 286, 
comments on the frequency with which, in certain 
critical works, the phrase occurs : " The author 
knows nothing " of this, that, or the other institu- 
tion or provision, the non-existence of which the 
critic is seeking to prove. He truly says that "the 

1 Margoliouth, "Lines of Defense," etc., p. 175. 

156 



THE ARGUMENT FROM SILENCE 



phrase has the merit or demerit of combining 
fact with inference. The fact is, ' the authoi says 
nothing ' ; the inference is, « he knew nothing be- 
cause there was nothing for him to know.' " And 
he adds : " We may venture the statement that the 
formula ' the author knows nothing ' has the nature 
of a suggestio fa/si, and that ' we know nothing ' 
expresses with considerably greater exactness the 
true facts of the case." Which would seem to be 
the plain common sense of the matter. 

Many specimens might be given ; a few repre- 
sentative ones will suffice. Thus, Professor Briggs 
asserts as one of the four main foundations of the 
critical position, " a silence in the historical, pro- 
phetical, poetical, and ethical writings as to many 
of the chief institutions of the pentateuchal legis- 
lation"; 1 the inference being, of course, that no 
such institutions existed. Here, as we see, Pro- 
fessor Briggs and Canon Driver part company ; the 
former treating the institutions and the legislation 
as inseparable, the latter holding that the institu- 
tions existed while the legislation did not. He is 
simply more cautious than his American congener, 
casting an anchor to windward in his attempt to 
offset the awkward implications of the passages 
considered in the preceding chapter — which pas- 
sages (as Doctor Driver perceives) are a direct 
refutation of Professor Briggs' claim. 

1 Briggs, " Higher Criticism of the Hexateuch," p. 96. 
157 



THE HIGHER CRITICISM CROSS-EXAMINED 

Prof. Robertson Smith attaches equal importance 
to the argument from silence. His references are 
frequent and wide-reaching. Taking for granted 
the necessary assumptions named by Professor 
Margoliouth, his conclusions substantially cover the 
whole ground of critical controversy : 

The law was as little known in Shiloh as among the 
masses of the people ; . . the Deuteronomic code was un- 
known to Isaiah ; . . the complete system of the Penta- 
teuch was not known in the period of the kings of Judah, 
even as the theoretic constitution of Israel ; . . Deuter- 
onomy knows no Levites who cannot be priests, and no priests 
who are not Levites ; . . and the Deuteronomic histor- 
ical retrospect was silent about the priestly tabernacle and 
its ordinances, and ignored the whole series of revelations 
to Moses and Aaron on which the priestly system of 
Israel's sanctity rests -, 1 

and many similar passages which might be cited. 

Kuenen makes a novel use of the argument. 
He first creates the silence by deletion from the 
text, and then argues upon it. He says in effect 
that neither the prophets nor the older historical 
books know of the distinction between priests and 
Levites ; nor of the exclusive fitness of the " sons 
of Aaron." 2 He admits that in I Kings 8 : i, the 
priests are distinguished from the Levites ; but 
treats it as a mere clerical error, which he corrects, 

1 Robertson Smith, 
2 7h 355, 359, 3 6o » 39' 

2 Kuenen, "Religion of Israel," Vol. II., p. 300 f. 

158 



THE ARGUMENT FROM SILENCE 



wonderful to relate, by a reference to the Chroni- 
cler ; while on the very next page he says : " It is 
highly contrary to true criticism to side with the 
Chronicler in the conflict between these writings 
and the older historical books." 1 Excepting, natu- 
rally those rare cases in which the Chronicler lends 
support to some critical view, in which event, as in 
the instance just quoted, their confidence in him is 
so absolute as to be childlike. 

Driver and Wellhausen find the argument equally 
useful ; the latter regarding it as " nothing more 
nor less than the universally valid method of 
historical investigation." 2 

Indeed, it seems to be an indispensable item in 
the critics' outfit ; and it is easy to see that their 
progress would be greatly hampered if not entirely 
hindered should they by any misfortune be de- 
prived of its aid. But, as an argument, standing 
alone, what does it prove ? Absolutely nothing. 
The assumptions essential to its validity are in 
ninety-nine cases out of a hundred altogether 
unprovable, and in the hundredth case doubtful. 

Their own high estimate of its value, however, 
has odd reservations. It is not a weapon which can 
be safely put into everybody's hands. It is only 
really sound when an expert critic needs it to patch 
out a case. Its use by a " traditionalist " ought 

1 Kuenen, " Religion of Israel," Vol. II., p. 301. 

2 " Proleg.," p. 365. 

159 



THE HIGHER CRITICISM CROSS-EXAMINED 

to be discouraged, if not strictly prohibited; he 
would be sure to draw some inconvenient inference 
from it. The book of Deuteronomy, for example, 
forged, as " all critics are agreed," in the reign of 
Josiah, about 620 b. c, is emphatic as to the one 
sanctuary and its requirement of the centralized 
worship of Israel thereat. The injunction is : 
" Unto the place which the Lord your God shall 
choose, out of all your tribes to put his name there, 
even unto his habitation shall ye seek, and thither 
shalt thou come" (Deut. 12 : 5). 

It will be seen that the author of Deuteronomy, 
whoever he may have been, is silent on three im- 
portant points. He speaks from the standpoint of 
an undivided Israel : " The place which the Lord 
your God shall choose out of all your tribes," is 
the language used. He " knows nothing " of the 
disruption by which Israel and Judah became sep- 
arate and hostile kingdoms. He speaks as of a 
time when the place of the sanctuary had not been 
chosen ; he says : " The place which the Lord 
your God shall choose." He " knows nothing " of 
Shiloh, " My place where I caused my name to 
dwell at the first " (Jer. 7 : 12). He " knows noth- 
ing " of the temple at Jerusalem, as to which God 
had said : " He (t. e. Solomon) shall build an house 
for my name " (2 Sam. 7:13). Therefore, accord- 
ing to the critics' favorite argument from silence, 
Deuteronomy was written before the revolt of the 

160 



THE ARGUMENT FROM SILENCE 



ten tribes, before the building of the temple, and 
before the establishment of the " house of God " 
at Shiloh in the days of the judges. Of course it 
is not for a moment to be imagined that they 
would admit its applicability to a case like that. 
It is only when it attacks the integrity of Scrip- 
ture that they regard it with anything like favor. 

Other apt opportunities for its use are sug- 
gested by Professor Margoliouth in a numerous 
group of psalms containing date indications point- 
ing to their collection in Davidic times, notably 
the Seventy-eighth, which epitomizes Israel's his- 
tory up to that period and no further. 

The professor says : 

The psalmists who versify the sacred history must have 
known of the glories of the Solomonic era, and of the split- 
ting of the nation, if they lived after the close of the mon- 
archical period ; why, then, do they become vague after the 
accession of David or earlier ? If they belong to the period 
of the divided kingdom, why do we find no trace of the 
hostility which ordinarily prevailed between the two divi- 
sions of Israel, and no aspirations after reunion ? Why are 
Ephraim and Manasseh given an honorable place beside 
Judah and Benjamin ? The later we place the collection the 
stronger does the argument from silence become. 1 

That Professor Cheyne, at any rate, sets no great 
store by it is evident, for with a serene disregard 
for the burden of proof and the one on whom it 

1 "Lines of Defense," etc., p. 189. 
L 161 



THE HIGHER CRITICISM CROSS-EXAMINED 

should properly rest, he decides for the late date 
of the entire Psalter on the ground that there is 
no evidence of the existence of any pre-exilic psalm 
— not even that furnished by the argument from 
silence. And his brethren of the critical fold are 
doubtless in substantial accord with him. 

What reason there is in the nature of things 
why sauce for the conservative goose should not 
also be sauce for the critical gander the com- 
mon man can never be made rightly to under- 
stand. But so the whole sorry process moves 
along, limping with unequal feet, carrying in its 
bag divers weights, a great and a small, with one 
measure to apply to attacks upon the Bible, and 
another to its defense, reducing the principles of 
logic to a nullity, and robbing all evidence of 
every iota of probative force. Of course, choos- 
ing their own forum and being themselves the 
judges of the relevance and weight of testimony, 
when it is to be emphasized and when ignored, 
adjusting the sliding scale to the exigencies of 
the immediate situation, they can "prove" any- 
thing and everything ; but if at the bar of any 
orderly tribunal, where one rule obtained alike 
for the affirmative and the defense they should 
resort to their customary tactics, they would be 
unable to prove ownership in a dog case, even if 
they escaped a reprimand from the bench for dis- 
ingenuous trifling with the court. 

162 



THE ARGUMENT FROM SILENCE 



The concluding section of Wellhausen's "Prole- 
gomena" being a reprint of the article "Israel" 
in the "Encyclopedia Britannica," gives a fairly de- 
tailed sketch of the history of Israel and Judah 
from the earliest times down to the fifteenth 
century of the Christian era ; and yet from begin- 
ning to end the name of Jesus of Nazareth is 
not once mentioned. Surely he was a Jew whose 
life and death were fraught with the most mo- 
mentous consequences for Israel, and yet the 
current of the narrative embracing the period of 
his career flows on without even the suggestion 
of an event which stirred to its depths the life 
of the Jewish people, and deflected the course of 
their history for all time. What does the argument 
from silence prove in this case ? 



163 



XII 

THE ARGUMENT FROM 
NON-OBSERVANCE 



Moses was the divine prohibitionist Nine-tenths ofiifs 
emphasis lies on the "Thou shalt not." But the point 
that pierces us in this revelation through Moses is that 
every ■ ■ Thou shalt not " is a disclosure of what men have 
done, and are prone to do, and would like to do again if 
they dared. The commandments sound like a shouting 
from the mountain-top of the secrets of many hearts. After 
each divine word which says, "Thou shall not," follows a 
human murmur which says, "But I will." . . 

Blot out the prediction of Christ, and Moses stands as an 
embodiment of failure — a leader who emancipated the na- 
tion and condemned the race ; the messenger of a divine 
law which was broken even while he was carrying it down 
from the burning mount. Henry Van Dyke, 



XII 

THE ARGUMENT FROM NON-OBSERVANCE 

I have written to him the great things of my law ; but 
they were counted as a strange thing. Hosea. 

They have forsaken the Lord ; they have provoked the 
Holy One of Israel ; they are gone away backward. 

— Isaiah. 

They have perverted their way, and they have forgotten 
the Lord their God. Jeremiah. 

Equal, if not greater, importance is attached 
by the critics to the argument from non-observance. 
Indeed, it is one of the foundation pillars of their 
whole superstructure. The gravamen of the criti- 
cal complaint against what they are pleased to 
term the " traditional theory " of the Old Testa- 
ment is that it presents an irreconcilable conflict 
between the law of Moses and the history of 
Israel ; and one of the chief merits claimed for 
the latest phase of the " higher criticism " is that, 
for the first time, it brings the law and the history 
into harmonious relations. * 

Without going into details, or specifying par- 
ticular instances, it will be sufficient to say broadly 

1 Prof. Robertson Smith's preface to Wellhausen's "Prole- 
gomena." 

167 



THE HIGHER CRITICISM CROSS-EXAMINED 

that this position is sought to be substantiated by 
showing that the course of Israelitish history from 
the time of the judges onward is throughout char- 
acterized, not only by a general, not to say universal, 
disregard of definite and fundamental institutions 
and provisions of the Mosaic law and ritual, but 
also by direct, open, and flagrant violations of the 
prohibitions thereof, and by the practice of a 
promiscuous and gross polytheism. The claim is 
that these features in the religious life of the peo- 
ple, pronounced as they are, and persisting as they 
do, even to the time of the captivity, admit of but 
one conclusion. That conclusion is that the Mo- 
saic law, as we now have it, was not in existence 
before the exile; and that faith in the one and 
only God which has for twenty centuries been re- 
garded as held from the beginning by the elect 
and faithful in Israel was merely a " conception " 
which slowly and painfully struggled into being 
well toward the close of the pre-exilic period. 

It is not to be denied that the sacred history 
does set out a state of facts from which it might 
fairly be inferred that both Israel and Judah were 
guilty of the practices charged against them. The 
bulk of the nation did disregard Mosaic institu- 
tions ; they were unmindful of the ten thousand 
precepts of the law, counting them as a strange 
thing ; they did at the outset and incessantly vio- 
late its prohibitions, moral and ritual ; and they 

168 



THE ARGUMENT FROM NON-OBSERVANCE 

were inveterate idolaters, hastening after strange 
gods and forgetting their covenant with Jehovah. 

Nor can it be questioned that these things, stand- 
ing alone and without explanation, might raise a 
presumption in favor of the critical hypothesis that 
the pentateuchal legislation was not in existence, 
and that the great truth of the Divine Unity was 
not then known to them. 

But the critics either preserve a discreet silence 
on, or in various ways minimize the force of the 
significant fact that concurrently with these un- 
varnished accounts of the misdoings of Israel, the 
historian from time to time characterizes this con- 
duct, recognizing it as sin against light and knowl- 
edge, violative of their covenant with Jehovah, and 
a departure from the God of their fathers. Con- 
temporaneous prophets too tell the same tale. 
Pointing persistently to the past, by line upon line, 
and precept upon precept, they reiterate exhorta- 
tion, warning, rebuke, and threatening. They de- 
nounce both Israel and Judah, not for failing to 
advance along lines of progress indicated by suc- 
cessive prophetic utterances, not for refusing to 
embrace new truth as it is unfolded, or to obey 
new commandments as they are given forth from 
time to time by the hand of the prophets, but for 
backsliding, for retrogression from an earlier and a 
purer standard, for turning aside from "the old 
path, the good way," forgetting their Maker, trans- 
169 



THE HIGHER CRITICISM CROSS-EXAMINED 

gressing his covenant, and trespassing against his 
laws. And they make these appeals in the evident 
assurance that the facts upon which they are based 
will neither be unknown nor misunderstood nor 
denied by the people to whom they are addressed. 

It would seem to be beyond question that these 
accompanying circumstances, characterizing and 
qualifying the narrative, put a new face upon the 
matter, exhibiting the facts in an entirely different 
light, and constituting a complete rebuttal of the 
presumptions out of which the critical theories are 
mainly manufactured. It is elementary law that 
when a party seeks to take advantage of an admis- 
sion he is bound to take the whole of such admis- 
sion as it stands, and is not at liberty to select the 
parts which please him while rejecting the remain- 
der. He may not isolate facts from their context, 
but must take the statement with all its qualifica- 
tions and explanations. Nor may he, while relying 
on the admission, impeach the authenticity of in- 
convenient parts of it without any other evidence 
than that they do not consist with his theory of 
the case. If the critics were held to this rule, and 
it is not to be denied that it is a salutary one, their 
whole occupation would be gone forever, and the 
"historical criticism" of Wellhausen and his fol- 
lowing would become a relic of the past. 

At its best, moreover, the argument from non- 
observance is a poor foundation on which to build, 

170 



THE ARGUMENT FROM NON-OBSERVANCE 

as a modern instance or two will show. The his- 
tory of England during the reigns of the Tudors 
and the earlier Stuarts presents to the student the 
spectacle of a people theoretically free, but prac- 
tically enslaved, — at least so far as the certainty of 
their civil rights, the quiet possession of their prop- 
erty, and the inviolability of their liberty and life 
were concerned. Popular rights were invaded and 
disregarded ; the property of wealthy merchants 
was confiscated under the form of "benevolences" ; 
men of substance, and even nobles, were outlawed 
on the flimsiest pretenses so that their goods 
might escheat to the crown ; and the life and lib- 
erty of all were at the mercy of the king's caprice. 
As one of the engines of this oppression, a com- 
mittee of the king's council, anciently possessing 
legitimate jurisdiction over the behavior of sheriffs, 
was erected into a court of law to determine civil 
rights, the members of which being " sole judges 
of the law, the fact, and the penalty," untram- 
meled by a jury, usurped "powers the most dan- 
gerous and unconstitutional " over persons and 
property, in the devising of means the most cor- 
rupt and iniquitous "to harass the subject and en- 
rich the crown." 1 This state of things continued 
without substantial betterment until, with the aboli- 
tion of Star Chamber and other oppressive tribu- 
nals, the whole system of arbitrary exaction and 

1 Sharswood's " Blackstone, " Book IV., pp. 266, 310. 
171 



THE HIGHER CRITICISM CROSS-EXAMINED 

injustice was swept away by the Long Parliament 
in 1640. 

But, notwithstanding all this array of diametric- 
ally opposing facts, there exists a tradition, appar- 
ently fortified by documentary evidence, that four 
hundred and twenty-five years earlier, on the field 
of Runnymede, the mailed barons of England 
wrested from King John what, though in the form 
of a charter, was in reality a great code of laws, 1 
one of whose provisions reads : " No freeman shall 
be taken or imprisoned or disseised or outlawed or 
banished or in any ways destroyed, nor will we pass 
upon him, nor will we send upon him, unless by the 
lawful judgment of his peers or by the law of the 
land." The story runs that eighty years later, King 
Edward I., sometimes called the English Justinian, 
solemnly ratified this code by statute declaring that 
any judgments thenceforth given " against the 
points of the charter should be undone and holden 
for naught " ; and at that early date settled the 
model of distributive justice as it exists to-day. 

Here we have, presented in its sharpest form, 
the famous critical " conflict between the law and 
the history." In the face of the palpable incom- 
patibility of the undeniable historical facts here 
enumerated with this so-called thirteenth century 
legislation, can any one doubt that this is a clear 

1 Pollock and Maitland, "History of English Law," Vol. I., 
p. 150. 

172 



THE ARGUMENT FROM NON-OBSERVANCE 

case of Wellhausen's " artificial repristination " over 
again ; a " dramatic setting forth as at the begin- 
ning of the history of ideals and principles which 
did not prevail for centuries thereafter " } 

This legislation belongs, at the earliest, to the 
period of the Protectorate ; and its promulgation 
is, without doubt, carried back into the remote past, 
merely to give the dignity of antiquity to laws 
which found no effectual expression in the history 
of the English people until the latter half of the 
seventeenth century. And yet there are benighted 
"traditionalists" such as Hallam and Blackstone, 
Freeman and Gardiner, who still insist that John 
and his barons signed Magna Charta in 12 15, and 
that the statute " Confirmatio Chartarum " was 
enacted under Edward I. in 1297. 

Or, to take another notable instance from the 
history of our own country : On the fourth of July, 
1776, the first Congress of the United States pro- 
mulgated with imposing solemnities the Declara- 
tion which formulated the principles upon which 
the new-born nation was to be founded. After the 
preamble, the first clause of this document begins : 

We hold these truths to be self-evident : That all men are 
created equal ; that they are endowed by their Creator with 
certain inalienable rights ; that among them are life, liberty, 
and the pursuit of happiness ; that to secure these rights, 
governments are instituted among men, deriving their just 
powers from the consent of the governed. 

173 



THE HIGHER CRITICISM CROSS-EXAMINED 

But the history of the nation demonstrates con- 
clusively that during the first century of its exist- 
ence, it not only ignored every one of these basic 
principles upon which it claimed to be established, 
but it deliberately and affirmatively violated them 
under the forms of law, and engaged every branch 
of its government, legislative, judicial, and execu- 
tive, in the maintenance and support of such vio- 
lations. During most of that period, the nation 
denied in act what at its inception it had solemnly 
affirmed in word : namely, that all men were created 
equal, endowed by their Creator with the inalien- 
able rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of hap- 
piness. Not only was a considerable proportion of 
its population held in complete and abject slavery, 
bought and sold as chattels in the open market, and 
with no status as human beings in the eyes of the 
law, but this relic of barbarism flourished for near a 
hundred years, and needed a bloody war to bring 
it to a period. And even to this day the equality re- 
garded as axiomatic by the Declaration is still but an 
abstract ideal awaiting realization in the far future. 

May not the historical critic of, say, 2900 a. d., 
decide that the execution of such a document at 
such a time was a manifest impossibility, contra- 
dicted in its every item by every feature of the 
subsequent history of the nation ? Or, again to 
borrow the critical catchword : " The law and the 
history are in irreconcilable conflict." 

i74 



THE ARGUMENT FROM NON-OBSERVANCE 

May he not say of the Declaration of Inde- 
pendence, using Wellhausen's own language as to 
the giving of the law upon Sinai, that 

it has only a formal, not to say dramatic, significance ; that 
it is the product of the poetic necessity for such a represen- 
tation of the manner in which the nation was constituted as 
should appeal directly and graphically to the imagination ; 
and that for the sake of producing a solemn and vivid im- 
pression, that is represented as having taken place in a sin- 
gle thrilling day, which in reality occurred slowly and 
almost unobserved ! * 

In short, that it is a mere "reflection of the present 
cast back into the past" ; a spectacular portrayal, 
as at the birth of the nation, of conditions which 
were the gradual product of far later stages in its 
historical development. With just as much warrant 
may this claim be asserted in the one case as in 
the other. 

1 "Prolegomena" p. 439. 



«75 



XIII 

THE EXTERNAL EVIDENCES 
BABYLONIAN 



We may now sum up the results of the latest discovery 
in Assyriology. It has forever shattered the "critical" 
theory which would put the prophets before the law ; it has 
thrown light on the form and character of the Mosaic code ; 
and it has indirectly vindicated the historical character of 
the narratives of Genesis. If such are the results of a 
single discovery, what may we not expect when the buried 
libraries of Babylonia have been more fully excavated, and 
their contents copied and read ? ^. j/ % Sayce. 



XIII 

THE EXTERNAL EVIDENCES : BABYLONIAN 

The men of Nineveh shall rise in judgment with this 
generation, and shall condemn it. Matthew. 

To the outsider it would appear that the recent 
discoveries in Egypt and Babylonia had rendered 
untenable many of the grounds on which the critics 
had founded their attacks upon the authenticity of 
the Scriptures, or, at least, had called them in seri- 
ous question, and that an open confession of that 
fact might be reasonably expected from them. 
But therein he would simply display his lamentable 
ignorance of the extent of their resources, and of 
the celerity and dexterity with which the critical 
camp is accustomed from time to time to shift its 
grounds, vociferously proclaiming the while that 
its main positions are in nowise affected. Premise 
after premise they abandon, usually preserving 
thereafter a dead silence as to the fact that they 
ever depended on them. But to their conclusions 
they cling tenaciously, never relinquishing them, 
except to embrace some other theory still more' 
radically inimical to the integrity and authority 
of the word of God. It is impossible for them 
179 



THE HIGHER CRITICISM CROSS-EXAMINED 

altogether to ignore these records of the past and 
the witness they bear, so they meet them by en- 
deavoring to evade and becloud the issues which 
they raise. 

One critic remarks sapiently and complacently 
that " archaeologists have made no discoveries which 
confirm the tradition that Moses wrote the Penta- 
teuch. 1 Did he imagine, perhaps, that " tradition- 
alists " were waiting in daily expectation that some 
industrious digger would unearth a tablet contain- 
ing a receipted bill showing how many shekels 
Moses paid to the scriveners for materials and 
labor in transcribing the Pentateuch, specifying 
the number of folios in order that there might be 
no doubt that the documents copied correspond in 
bulk with the traditional books of the law ? 

It is the merest commonplace to say that archaeo- 
logical discoveries have not proved that Moses 
wrote the Pentateuch. No sane man ever dreamed 
that they had done so. But they have exposed the 
worthlessness of many of the critical reasons for 
denying the possibility of the origination of those 
writings in the Mosaic age. They have shown 
history, exact and circumstantial, where criticism 
has seen but myth, tradition, and fiction. They 
have confronted with the " camels " of fact, those 
evolved by the Germanic inner consciousness. 
They have demonstrated that methods of " codifi- 

1 Sinker, " Higher Criticism," p. 27. 
180 



THE EXTERNAL EVIDENCES : BABYLONIAN 

cation " which the critics have assigned to the 
post-exilic period as peculiarly characteristic of that 
age, were in active operation in the days of Abra- 
ham. And they have shown generally that wher- 
ever points of contact have been clearly estab- 
lished between these relics of remote antiquity 
and the Oracles of God, it has been but to add 
another witness to the fact that " His word is true 
from the beginning." 

In the recent work of Professor Sayce, " Monu- 
ment Facts and Higher Critical Fancies," that 
eminent Assyriologist, with the candor and impar- 
tiality which have always marked his utterances, 
has given in a popular and compendious form some 
results of archaeological research so far as they 
bear upon the questions under consideration ; and 
those who esteem valid reasoning upon established 
fact and the application of a sound scientific 
method to those questions, are earnestly com- 
mended to that little book. It would be presump- 
tuous, as well as superfluous, to add to what has 
been there so nobly said ; and that phase of the 
subject might well be dismissed with this reference, 
were it not that it seems proper to notice some 
critical comments on the facts with which Professor 
Sayce's discussion deals. 

He shows, for instance, that the age of Moses 
was a literary age ; contrary to the old-time criti- 
cal contention that the art of writing was then 
181 



THE HIGHER CRITICISM CROSS-EXAMINED 

unknown, and that Moses, consequently, could not 
have written the books ascribed to him. 

Doctor Driver in his " Introduction to the Lit- 
erature of the Old Testament" denies present de- 
pendence on the argument, and rather unneces- 
sarily points to the contents of that volume in con- 
firmation of his assertion. 1 Doctor Smith to much 
the same effect writes : " Nor do any of the argu- 
ments for the late date of the 'Hexateuch' rest 
upon a reason which, even if it were probable, is 
so impossible to prove." He thinks, however, it 
would be unsafe to conclude that the Israelites of 
Moses' time knew how to write. 2 

Of course, they do not now rely on that ground, 
and they are quite willing to have it forgotten that 
they, or their predecessors, ever did. But they 
certainly cannot deny that not so many years 
since, it was a valuable asset in the stock in trade 
of the critical copartnership. Even Wellhausen, 
to whom the English school owe substantially 
all that is fundamental and distinctive in their 
scheme, comes very near to a statement of the 
argument in its baldest form. On this very point 
he claims distinctly that the age of Elijah and 
Elisha was a non-literary one, and that although 
writing had been practised from a much earlier 
period, it was only in formal instruments, mainly 

1 "Introduction," etc., p. 158. 
3 "Modern Criticism," etc., p. 59 f. 
182 



THE EXTERNAL EVIDENCES I BABYLONIAN 

upon stone. 1 How utterly wide of the mark this 
is, Professor Sayce has conclusively shown. But 
the English critics, according to custom, while 
abandoning Wellhausen's premise, hold fast to 
Wellhausen's conclusions. 

In any event, the disclaimer of Doctors Driver 
and Smith misses entirely the point raised by the 
establishment of the literary character of the 
Mosaic age. That is, the inherent absurdity of 
the assumption that, with a literary atmosphere 
surrounding him on all sides, and with literary 
activities not only prevalent among the higher 
classes, but permeating every grade of society in 
the land of his birth and residence, 2 a man equipped 
as Moses must have been for the tremendous task 
which he successfully achieved, should not have 
been equal to, and should not have availed himself 
of the opportunity of preserving in permanent 
form by written records for the future guidance of 
Israel, the elementary constituents of the origin 
and history of a divinely called people, and the 
laws of a divinely constituted nation. 

Again, it will be remembered, as stated in an 
earlier chapter, that Prof. George Adam Smith 
says : " It is on the presence of many ' doublets ' 

1 "Prolegomena," p. 464 f. See also, Schultz, "Old Testa- 
ment Theology," Vol. I., p. 25 f. 

2 " Monument Facts," p. 31. 

183 



THE HIGHER CRITICISM CROSS-EXAMINED 

in the ' Hexateuch ' and historical books that the 
modern criticism of the Old Testament is based." x 
The authors of these doublets or two-fold narra- 
tives of the same event, were first called respect- 
ively the Jehovist and Elohist, and were repre- 
sented in critical works by the symbols J and E. 
But latterly a custom has grown up of dropping 
the names Jehovist and Elohist, because of certain 
inconveniences occasioned by their use, from the 
critical point of view, and of substituting therefor 
the names of Judean and Ephraimite writers ; thus 
while the original distinction on which " the mod- 
ern criticism of the Old Testament is based " has 
vanished, the critics have still, in the new titles, 
preserved intact the sacrosanct initials J and E, 
which they frequently, from prudential motives, 
join together thus, JE. 

With reference to these doublets, Prof. Robert- 
son Smith says : " A clear case is the account of 
the flood. As it now stands the narrative has the 
most singular repetitions, and things come in in the 
strangest order. But as soon as we separate the 
Jehovah and Elohim documents all is clear." 2 

Professor Sayce shows, however, that in the 
Babylonian account of the flood, written more 
than two thousand years before the advent of the 
hypothetical J and E, the narrative exhibits the 

1 "Modern Criticism," etc., p. 33. 

2 "The Old Testament in the Jewish Church," p. 329. 

184 



THE EXTERNAL EVIDENCES I BABYLONIAN 

very characteristics relied on by the critics to 
prove the composite authorship of the account in 
Genesis. So these ancient Babylonians too had 
their own variety of J and E to pester them. It 
is to be hoped they had no higher critics to sepa- 
rate the documents, and thus spoil their enjoyment 
of the Epic of Gilgames. 

Now, in his " Modern Criticism and the Preach- 
ing of the Old Testament," Prof. G. A. Smith 
more than once mentions and comments on this 
Babylonian story of the flood. 1 And it is odd, to 
say the least, that he should be silent as to a 
peculiarity which was so manifest and so significant 
to Professor Sayce. That it should have escaped 
the attention of so careful an observer is unac- 
countable, for it is not a mere question of minor 
interest, but one of primary importance ; and, as 
the case stands, reduces the hypothesis as to the 
divisibility of the Genesis documents, so far as that 
hypothesis is based on the double narrative of the 
flood, to a palpable absurdity. At least, that is 
the impression it would create on the mind of the 
ordinary man, accustomed to deal in a plain and 
straightforward manner with facts as they come 
before him, and alike ignorant and contemptuous 
of the finespun theories of speculative scholarship. 

Another bone of contention has been the bibli- 
cal account of Abram's rescue of Lot and his 

1 " Modern Criticism," pp. 60 f., 91 f. 

185 



THE HIGHER CRITICISM CROSS-EXAMINED 

family from the four kings under the leadership of 
Chedorlaomer of Elam, contained in the fourteenth 
chapter of Genesis. The critics have been unusu- 
ally severe upon this chapter. To them it was 
utterly without foundation in fact ; not even worthy 
of inclusion within the "four main sources " of the 
Pentateuch, being, as Kuenen says, a fragment of 
a post-exilian midrash of Abram's life, of very recent 
date, however archaic it may be in form. 1 In short, 
that it was a scrap of more than ordinarily auda- 
cious fiction, interjected without perceptible reason 
into the legendary life of a man who was a myth 
anyway ; and that its incidents were " sheer im- 
possibilities which gained nothing in credibility 
from the fact that they were placed in a world 
which had passed away." 2 

Its historic setting was declared to be incredible ; 
history "knowing nothing" of an Elamite suprem- 
acy in Babylonia, or of an empire on the Persian 
Gulf, which in that age had subject provinces so 
far west as Syria. Equally preposterous was the 
idea that at that distant date a military expedition 
from Babylonia to Canaan, such as is there de- 
scribed, could have been successfully prosecuted. 
The priest-king Melchizedek was a wholly ficti- 
tious personage, filling an equally fictitious office, 
created for the purpose of glorifying the priest- 

1 Kuenen, "The Hexateuch," p. 324. 

2 Wellhausen, "Composition des Hexateuch) 's," p. 3 1 1, 

186 



THE EXTERNAL EVIDENCES I BABYLONIAN 

hood of Jerusalem and to justify their claiming 
tithes; 1 while the name of the city itself was a 
gross anachronism, the place having been called 
Jebus until its capture by David. The names of 
the actors in the episode even were not genuine. 
Some of them were not personal, but place-names. 2 
According to Professor Hommel, " a distinguished 
Orientalist long ago declared this chapter to be a 
fantastic grouping together of names which either 
belonged to some remote period or were expressly 
invented for the occasion." 3 

If anything could be more dogmatic in conclu- 
sion, or more categorical in statement than the 
various items of the "assured results of criticism " 
as to this passage of ancient history, it is difficult 
to see what form those conclusions and statements 
could assume. And so long as the voice of the 
inscriptions was silent and their messages remained 
undeciphered the critics held the position triumph- 
antly against all comers. But archaeology takes 
the field, and a more ignominious rout of subjective 
theory-building at the hands of patient gatherers 
of facts can hardly be imagined. 

The names mentioned in Genesis were genuine, 
with real men behind them. Amraphel was king 
of Shinar, Chedorlaomer of Elam, Arioch of Larsa, 

1 Kuenen, Op. cit, same page. 

2 Kuenen, Ibid., p. 324. 

3 Hommel, "Ancient Hebrew Tradition," p. 160. 

187 



THE HIGHER CRITICISM CROSS-EXAMINED 

and Tidal of nations, or nomad hordes, their 
reigns synchronizing with the life of the patriarch 
Abraham. The Elamite king was the overlord of 
the others at that precise period, holding Canaan, 
the land of the Amorites, as a subject province. 
That his western tributaries did rebel, as stated in 
Genesis, with the result that a punitive expedition 
was projected and carried into effect as there in- 
dicated, is inherently probable, and introduces into 
Babylonian history an episode which, as Professor 
Hommel says, " fits into the political circumstances 
of the period like a missing fragment," 1 throwing 
a valuable light upon the knowledge of this remote 
epoch which we gather from the cuneiform records. 

In pre-Mosaic days too, the royal city of Judah 
was known as Jerusalem, or Uru-salim, i. e.> the 
city of Salem, and one of its rulers speaks of his 
tenure of office in terms strongly reminiscent of 
the references to Melchizedek in the Epistle to 
the Hebrews. 

The story of these discoveries is graphically 
told by Professor Sayce in the little book above 
mentioned. 2 

1 Hommel, Op. cit., p. 1 92. 

2 Those who desire a more detailed account with the evidence 
set out at length are referred to the same author's " Higher Criti- 
cism and the Monuments," Professor Hommel's "Ancient He- 
brew Tradition as Illustrated by the Monuments," Dr. T. G. 
Pinches' "Old Testament in the Light of the Historical Records 
of Assyria and Babylonia," and Urquhart's "Modern Discov- 
eries and the Bible." See "New Biblical Guide," Vol. II. 

188 



THE EXTERNAL EVIDENCES I BABYLONIAN 

And the critics ? Oh, they are doing business 
at the old stand, vending the old wares with but 
slightly modified cries, serenely oblivious of the 
fact that those particular wares have been indelibly 
stamped shoddy, pinchbeck, and counterfeit. 

Wellhausen sticks to what he said, "regardless," 
as the Westerner would elliptically put it. He is 
the orchid of the critical flora, and can live on 
nothing, " hoist in the air by his own waistband," 
to adopt the exquisitely elegant metaphor by which 
he characterizes the work of the Chronicler. 

In his " Introduction " Canon Driver dismisses 
this chapter in six lines, with the mild concession 
that " the historical improbabilities of the narrative 
have been exaggerated," although to the ordinary 
man "demolished" would have seemed a more ap- 
propriate term. He admits the authentication by 
the monuments of the names of the four kings, 
moving them a few centuries further into the past 
to get them safely out of Abraham's way, and 
comments on the lack of monumental corrobora- 
tion of the residue of the narrative ; * thus showing 
that, however high his professed regard for the Old 
Testament, its statements must receive outside 
support before he can accept them. Ordinarily the 
verification of the historicity of a coherent account, 
in so far as the discoverable evidence came into 
contact with it, would raise at least a presumption 

1 Driver, '♦Introduction," etc., p. 15. 
189 



THE HIGHER CRITICISM CROSS-EXAMINED 

that the remainder was of like character. Not 
so, apparently, in the mind of a canon of the 
church with respect to the word of God. 

Prof. G. A. Smith is almost as summary and 
much more peculiar in his treatment of the chap- 
ter. He too notes the lack of corroboration ; but 
he considers that even if it were present it would 
not better the case for the truth of the Bible. For, 
on the strength of "some evidence," the nature 
of which is not specified, there would still remain 
for him the possibility of an exilic origin. Of 
course, when one avowedly prefers remote possi- 
bilities to confirmatory proof, contemporaneous in 
character, there is nothing more to be said. 

He follows with a statement of what is perhaps 
the most extraordinary argument to be found in 
the history of dialectics. He says, " In any case 
this chapter cannot be used in the discussion of 
the critical conclusions as to the date of the four 
main constituents of the Hexateuch, for it lies 
outside them all." 1 

This remarkable plea presents strong affinities 
to the device of the thin duelist who, when his fat 
opponent complained of the unfairness of the con- 
test because of the larger surface he presented as 
a target, suggested that his shape should be chalked 
upon the fat man's body, and that all shots outside 
the chalk line should not count. 

1 Smith, " Modern Criticism," etc., p. 62. 
190 



THE EXTERNAL EVIDENCES : BABYLONIAN 

The precise question at issue is whether the 
patriarchal narrative contained in the book of Gene- 
sis is history or myth. As it stands it is an integer. 
It has so stood for immemorial ages. Nor is there 
a scrap of external evidence that this was not its 
original form. In this narrative the incident under 
consideration occupies its appropriate place, chron- 
ologically speaking, in the account of the life of 
its chief actor, Abraham. Nor is there the slight- 
est appearance of any incoherence between it and 
the rest of the narrative, or of its having been 
violently thrust therein so as to interrupt its or- 
derly course. And when it is shown that contem- 
porary records authenticate it in substantial par- 
ticulars, and to a striking degree demonstrate its 
fidelity to the historical surroundings and the 
political situation of the time, it seems impossible 
to deny that that fact has a most important 
bearing upon, and, so far as it goes, tends to support 
the claim that the narrative of which it forms a 
part is based upon trustworthy documentary evi- 
dence, and not upon confused and discordant tradi- 
tions reduced to writing one thousand years after- 
ward. And the contention that this item of evidence 
may be stricken from the record and its probative 
force nullified because the critics have assumed 
that the Hexateuch contains "four main sources," 
and that it belongs to none of them, is simply be- 
wildering. They may assume that it has four 
191 



THE HIGHER CRITICISM CROSS-EXAMINED 

sources or forty ; but that has nothing to do with 
the question of the competency and relevancy of 
this evidence and its bearing upon the historicity 
of the Abrahamic biography. Nor would such an 
assumption relieve them of the burden of answer- 
ing it if the controversy were at issue in any other 
forum than one in which agreement with a theory 
is regarded as demonstration of a fact, and where 
hypotheses are accepted as the equivalents of self- 
evident truths. 



[92 



XIV 

THE EXTERNAL EVIDENCES 
EGYPTIAN 



N 



The narrators show themselves very familiar with the man- 
ners, the customs, and the ideas of the Egyptians. There 
is not a single detail which can be made to prove the con- 
trary. A certain number of descriptions and references 
are astonishingly faithful and striking. 

— August Dillmann. 

The history of Joseph, even in its smallest details, has 
painted with the greatest exactness the conditions of ancient 
Egypt —Georg Ebers. 



History fixes the exodus of Israel in the epoch of the 
Nineteenth Dynasty, and geography assigns it to the same 
date. The fact admits of only one explanation. The story 
of the exodus as it is set before us in the Old Testa- 
ment must have been derived from contemporaneous writ- 
ten documents, and must describe events which actually 
took place. It is no fiction or myth, no legend whose only 
basis is folk lore and unsubstantiaNradition, but history in 
the real sense of the word. We may rest assured, "criti- 
cism ' ' notwithstanding, that Israel was once in Egypt, and 
that the narrative of its flight under the leadership of Moses 
is founded on sober fact. ^ # /j t Sayce. 



XIV 

THE EXTERNAL EVIDENCES \ EGYPTIAN 

In that day shall cities in the land of Egypt speak the 
language of Canaan. —Isaiah. 

The reliance of the critics upon the " internal 
evidences " furnished by the books of the Old 
Testament as the basis of their extraordinary 
conclusions is sought to be justified by Doctor 
Driver on the ground that no external evidence 
worthy of credit exists whereby the age and 
authorship of those books may be determined. l 
In a narrowly technical sense, this claim is, of 
course, well founded. There is no direct, con- 
temporaneous testimony from the outside upon 
those two precise points. But it does not at all 
follow that such external evidences as we have are 
not germane to the subject, or that they are with- 
out value in helping toward a correct decision 
upon those questions, and may, therefore, be 
safely ignored as negligible factors in the problem. 
While they may not affirmatively support the 
"traditional" view, they may suffice to negative 
rather forcibly many " critical " theories, and so, 

1 Driver, "Introduction," p. xl. 
i9S 



THE HIGHER CRITICISM CROSS-EXAMINED 



although not proving the conservatives in the right, 
be potent enough to put the critics in the wrong. 

Thus, to take one of the instances noted in the 
preceding chapter, the claim is that the biblical 
account of the flood originally consisted of two 
independent narratives, each with its own marked 
peculiarities, one written in the Southern kingdom 
by the Jehovist during the ninth century b. c, and 
the other in the Northern kingdom by the Elo- 
hist during the eighth century, which two ac- 
counts, peculiarities and all, were combined into 
one record by a redactor about a hundred years 
later. 1 The Babylonian inscriptions show that a 
thousand years before the age of Moses these 
two elements, the Jehovistic and the Elohistic, 
with all their distinctive features, were contained 
in one narrative, viz., the account of the flood in 
the Chaldean Epic of Gilgames. So, while the 
external evidence did not establish the age and 
authorship of the Genesis narrative, it effectually 
demolished the theory of the critics upon that 
subject, incidentally throwing discredit to that 
extent upon the whole scheme of the composite 
authorship of the Pentateuch, as formulated, dated, 
and appraised by the latest school, and certified 
by them as among the most " assured results of 
criticism." 

It must be admitted that the external evidences 



Sinker, " Higher Criticism," p. 70 f. 
196 



THE EXTERNAL EVIDENCES : EGYPTIAN 

drawn from ancient Egyptian sources differ in 
character from those furnished by the Babylonian 
inscriptions, in that the latter contain direct refer- 
ences to the subject-matter of the biblical record 
which are absent from the former. But the Egyp- 
tian evidences are equally valuable, and it may be 
said equally decisive, in redeeming the patriarchal 
and Mosaic narratives from the charge made against 
them by the critics of being loose and uncertain 
traditions only partially committed to writing even 
in the days of the divided monarchy. 

The course of modern research is making it 
increasingly manifest that the scriptural account 
of the sojourn in Egypt, from the captivity of 
Joseph to the exodus, reproduces the Egyptian 
life of the time with photographic minuteness and 
fidelity without an anachronism or a false note. 
Forty years ago Dr. Georg Ebers, who certainly 
cannot be accused of partiality toward the " tradi- 
tional view," in the preface to his great work, 
" Egypt and the Books of Moses," said : 

I offer, so to say, in spite of myself and yet voluntarily, 
to those who wish to close the gates against free criticism, 
many things which will be agreeable to them, for I show 
that the history of Joseph in particular, even to its smallest 
details, has painted with the greatest exactness the 
conditions of ancient Egypt. 

And this verdict stands unreversed. All that 
the critics even have attempted to do on this head 
197 



THE HIGHER CRITICISM CROSS-EXAMINED 

is to explain away its necessary corollaries. In 
his "Life and Times of Joseph," 1 from which 
work the foregoing excerpt is quoted, Mr. John 
Urquhart has followed the history of Joseph 
step by step with scrupulous and painstaking 
care, and has made it clear that not only in its 
broader aspects, but also in its most insignifi- 
cant incidents, the story imports such intimate 
knowledge of Egypt under the foreign dominion 
of the Semitic shepherd kings, and the corre- 
spondences between it and the known facts of that 
epoch are so numerous and precise that no other 
conclusion is possible than that it is a historical 
document of the first class, of such a measure of 
contemporaneity as to enable its author to walk 
with assured step through the pitfalls and ob- 
scurities of that remote period without a lapse or 
an error. 

The atmosphere of the story is Egyptian ; the 
social structure is of the time and place ; the 
usages and conditions of daily life quadrate with 
the facts ; the political situation harmonizes with 
the showing of the inscriptions ; the requirements 
of the court etiquette of the period are correctly 
observed ; official titles are faithfully transcribed 
and the specific duties attached to the various of- 
fices accurately assigned ; the narrative shows 
familiarity with current phrases and forms of 

1 "New Biblical Guide," Vols. II., III. 
108 



THE EXTERNAL EVIDENCES : EGYPTIAN 

speech ; purely Egyptian words are incorporated 
into the text, needing no explanation to those who 
had been dwellers in Egypt, but meaningless to all 
besides; the odd inversion in Joseph's question, 
" Is your father well ? Is he yet alive ? " (Gen. 43 : 
27) is found paralleled in an ancient papyrus deci- 
phered by Chabas ; undesigned coincidences un- 
obtrusively present themselves, and there are 
throughout indications that the dominant race was 
non-Egyptian, and that the dynasty was that of 
the Hyksos. In fine, Urquhart demonstrates that 
every ear-mark of historicity is present, with no 
hint or suggestion to the contrary, and he illus- 
trates and fortifies his position by frequent refer- 
ence to and quotation from the works of Maspero, 
Lenormant, Brugsch Bey, and other Egyptologists 
whose authority none would dispute. 

One quotation in particular from Brugsch may 
be noted. That author gives an inscription from 
a rock tomb which he assigns to the times imme- 
diately preceding the eighteenth dynasty, i. e., the 
one in which the foreign dominion of the Hyksos 
was overthrown and Egypt restored to its native 
kings. The tomb was that of an official named 
Baba, the servant of a vassal king under Apepi, 
the Pharaoh of Joseph's times. 

After setting forth his many virtues, Baba says : 
" I collected the harvest as a friend of the harvest 
god. I was watchful at the time of sowing. And 
199 



THE HIGHER CRITICISM CROSS-EXAMINED 

now, when a famine arose, lasting many years, 1 
issued out corn to the city each year of famine." 
Commenting on this, Doctor Brugsch says : "The 
only just conclusion is that the many years of 
famine in the time of Baba must precisely corre- 
spond with the seven years of famine under 
Joseph's Pharaoh, one of the shepherd kings." 1 
And to the truth of this conclusion high proba- 
bility is accorded by the late Reginald Stuart Poole, 
of the British Museum, in his article " Egypt " in 
the " Encyclopaedia Britannica." 

Now it is idle to claim that an account which 
beyond question exhibits the characteristics above 
indicated is myth or folk lore containing only " a 
substratum of actual personal history" or oral tradi- 
tion a millennium old before its reduction to writ- 
ing. Doubly so is it when we are asked to regard 
it as mere patchwork tradition constructed on the 
instalment plan, with centuries between the various 
patches, and the whole subjected to the periodic 
onslaughts of an interminable succession of redac- 
tors. If it is not history, entitled to an honorable 
status and to sober credence as such, then that 
term can never be applied to any of the records 
of antiquity, and the entire history of the ancient 
world must remain for all time in remediless 
obscurity and confusion. 

If this were an isolated question, uncomplicated 

1 Brugsch, "Egypt under the Pharaohs," Vol. I., p. 261 f. 



THE EXTERNAL EVIDENCES : EGYPTIAN 

by the necessities of the place assigned to this 
document in the general critical scheme, it is safe 
to say that the critics would never have been con- 
cerned to impeach its authenticity. But the system 
demands that its value as evidence must be im- 
paired ; so, as it is impossible for them either to 
deny or to ignore the facts, it becomes necessary 
that they should resort to the favorite legal device 
of "confession and avoidance," thereby enabling 
them to admit the facts and yet " save the face " 
of the theory. 

Wellhausen, referring to these narratives in gen- 
eral, admits that " many of them have a local color, 
which bespeaks a local origin." * There is an oracu- 
lar profundity about this utterance worthy of the 
immortal Captain Bunsby himself. It may be safely 
left to speak for itself. It is probably unanswer- 
able. Certainly, while it does the " traditionalist " 
contention no good, it can do the critical theory no 
harm ; which is a prime virtue in an admission. 

On this subject at large, though not with special 
reference to the Genesis narratives, Doctor Driver 
says, " The biblical records possess exactly that de- 
gree of historical and topographical accuracy which 
would be expected from the circumstances under 
which all reasonable critics hold that they were 
composed." 2 Which, in turn, is just about what 

1 "Prolegomena" p. 327. 

2 "Introduction," Pref., p. xi. 



THE HIGHER CRITICISM CROSS-EXAMINED 

might have been expected from Doctor Driver — 
namely, a supercilious reliance upon the great name 
to which his profound erudition and undoubted 
critical acumen have justly entitled him as his 
justification for a dismissal of the whole subject 
with his mere ipse dixit ; and if the common peo- 
ple are not satisfied they ought to be. 

Professor Smith does condescend to go into the 
question somewhat more in detail. He says : 

The portrait of Egyptian life presented by the story of 
Joseph in the Jahwist-Elohist document has been appealed 
to, as proof that the writer lived at a time when Israel, from 
their long residence in Goshen were still familiar with 
Egypt . . But the life which the story of Joseph portrays 
was the life of Egypt not only in Joseph's time. In the 
same molds it persisted for centuries after the exodus. l 

An explanation this, which has about as many ele- 
ments of probability in it as that of the burglar 
who, when detected rifling a safe in a house into 
which he had broken, explained that he was there 
looking for a lost family cat. The seventeenth 
dynasty, to which by general agreement Joseph's 
Pharaoh belonged, is placed, approximately, in the 
eighteenth century b. c. The earliest (Jehovist) 
account of Joseph's life is assigned to the ninth 
century b. c. And the claim that an "accurate 
and vivid description " of Egyptian life at the later 

1 " Modern Criticism," p. 63. 
202 



THE EXTERNAL EVIDENCES : EGYPTIAN 

date would present an equally faithful representa 
tion of the conditions existing nine hundred years 
earlier is one which, to say the least, is calculated 
to make rather heavy draughts upon human cre- 
dulity. The early epoch was one of Egyptian sub- 
jection to an alien usurpation — a fact which of 
itself would raise a presumption that the conti- 
nuity of Egyptian life and usage would be thereby 
broken and features introduced which would serve 
to differentiate it, notwithstanding general resem- 
blances, from subsequent periods under native 
kings. The immobility of the " unchanging East " 
is proverbial ; but that characteristic would hardly 
warrant the assumption that near a thousand years 
could pass away leaving no trace of its flight in 
the habits and customs of the people and no marks 
to distinguish its beginning from its close. 

The facts, moreover, are against the claim. 
Canon Rawlinson conclusively shows that, instead 
of the life of Joseph's time persisting in the same 
molds for centuries after the exodus, the direct 
contrary is the fact ; x and that while such a state- 
ment might have been justly made as to earlier 
epochs of Egyptian history, vast changes with far- 
reaching effects were already in operation during 
the eighteenth dynasty, long before the exodus. 

He says : 

1 See also R. S. Poole, quoted by Urquhart, in "The Bible, 
its Structure and Purpose," Vol. I., pp. 247 f. 

203 



THE HIGHER CRITICISM CROSS-EXAMINED 

The strength of Egypt had from the first consisted in its 
isolation and its unity. For centuries upon centuries the 
policy of isolation was maintained — foreign manners, for- 
eign ideas, foreign gods, were either unheard of or studiously 
ignored. But with the accession of the eighteenth dynasty 
all this was changed. 

Foreign wars carried the Egyptian arms deep into 
Asia ; foreign commerce was encouraged ; foreign 
prisoners were brought into the country ; foreign 
mercenaries were employed ; the " gilded youth " 
of the upper circles took to foreign travel. 

As a natural result foreign manners crept in, the language 
was corrupted by a large admixture of Semitic words, the 
Pantheon was invaded by a host of Semitic or Scythic dei- 
ties, and the old national exclusive spirit, sapped and weak- 
ened by these various influences, decayed and died away. 1 

In the nineteenth dynasty too, while art and lit- 
erature flourished to an unprecedented degree, the 
morals of the people underwent a decided change 
for the worse. The evils of over-taxation were 
aggravated ; unusual and inhuman punishments 
were inflicted ; men and women were stripped 
naked and subjected to the pain and indignity of 
the bastinado ; cruel customs prevailed in war ; 
captives were slain and mutilated : 

Polygamy on a vast scale was introduced into the royal 
household ; indecency in apparel was common ; and the 

1 Rawlinson, " History of Ancient Egypt," Vol. II., p. 208. 
204 



THE EXTERNAL EVIDENCES I EGYPTIAN 

profligacy of the women was such as to become a common- 
place of Egyptian novels. Altogether, it would seem that 
the acme of perfection in art was coincident with a decline 
in morals — a decline which combined increased savagery 
with advancing sensualism. 1 

Later dynasties witnessed still more radical, 
even revolutionary changes, augmented in volume 
and accelerated in movement, invading every de- 
partment of national life, until in the period to 
which the composition of the Genesis narratives 
is attributed, Egypt was but a shadow of its former 
self. And yet we are asked to believe that an ac- 
count portraying Egyptian life in that decadent 
age would fit equally well the conditions existing 
centuries before ! 

Professor Smith further says that "under the 
monarchy Israel had many opportunities of becom- 
ing acquainted with it." The picture which this 
suggests of those early "historical novelists" sev- 
erally making trips to Egypt in the ninth and 
eighth centuries respectively to "imbibe local 
color " to enable them to verify and touch up the 
details of their story is an engaging one ; but it 
appeals more forcibly to the imagination than to 
the reason. 

He further finds indications of late origin in 
some of the names given in Genesis. Here again 
he and Canon Rawlinson are at direct variance. 

1 Rawlinson, " History of Ancient Egypt," Vol. II., p. 194. 
205 



THE HIGHER CRITICISM CROSS-EXAMINED 

For the latter says distinctly that the Egyptian 
words and names connected with the history point 
to the times of the Hyksos, citing Brugsch Bey in 
support of this view. ' To the same effect writes 
Doctor Souttar in his recent work. 2 

The contention of Professor Smith is that "the 
Egyptian names Zaphnath-Paaneah, Potipherah, 
and Asenath belong to types of names which do 
not appear or are not frequent on the Egyptian 
monuments until some centuries after the exo- 
dus." Now, in the name of candor and common 
fairness, which does he mean ? Never ? or, hardly 
ever ? If the latter, why confuse the issue by the 
interjection of a misleading alternative ? 

It would, in any event, be interesting to know 
how many men with such names as " Praise-God 
Barebones" and " Fight-the-good-fight-of -faith Pet- 
tengill " would have to be mentioned in the history 
of Cromwellian times before he would be con- 
vinced that names of that kind were known and 
used in the seventeenth century. One well au- 
thenticated example might suffice a disinterested 
man. One hundred would be too few to satisfy 
one who, for other causes, was bent on maintaining 
a contrary view. 

1 Brugsch, " History of Egypt," Vol. I., p. 265. 

2 Robinson Souttar, "Short History of Ancient Peoples," 
p. 197. 



206 



XV 

THE QUESTION OF MORALS 



There is no instance of an elaborate historical and legis- 
lative work having been composed with the object of con- 
fusing, if not perverting, a nation's traditions of its own 
history and its ancient laws ; still less of such a work suc- 
ceeding in the attempt 

Most incredible, if not most monstrous of all is the sup- 
position that such a pious fraud was committed at the insti- 
gation of the God of truth, and that the books which are its 
record and its instrument can be regarded as inspired by him. 

— Henry Wace. 



I have seen in the writings of men of less eminence in 
criticism than Doctor Driver such a smug sentence as this : 
1 ' The charge of forgery will not be entertained by those of 
us who are acquainted with the literary customs of the East ' ' 

This naive self-complacency and easy assumption of pecu- 
liar and exclusive acquaintance with Oriental literary cus- 
tom must not, of course, be taken seriously by any one who 
desires to deal with these matters in a genuinely critical 
spirit These gentlemen know no more about Oriental 
usages than other people, and they cannot be allowed to 
intermingle their personal preconceptions with the rigid pro- 
cesses of criticism. Neither Doctor Driver nor any one 
else has any adequate means of becoming acquainted with 
the literary usages and moral ideas of the time when the 
Pentateuch was written except by an unbiased investigation 
of the Pentateuchal writings themselves. 

— John Thomas. 



XV 

THE QUESTION OF MORALS 

Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles ? 

— Matthew. 

It is pertinent at this point to inquire what place 
the Old Testament as reconstructed by the critics 
is to occupy in the Christian scheme of things. 
Up to recent times, the general consensus of 
Christian belief was that the two Testaments were 
indissolubly joined, and that together they formed 
one body of revelation, interdependent throughout, 
and informed by a unity of spirit and purpose 
which gave assurance that one divine life moved in 
and through and vitalized the whole. And while 
it was fully recognized that the older order was 
provisional and incomplete in character and con- 
tent, and that its design was largely educational, 
being our schoolmaster to bring us to Christ, yet 
his coming was not regarded as abolishing or 
superseding it as an integral element in the revela- 
tion of God to men, of which our Lord and Sav- 
iour was the final Word. He came not to destroy, 
but to fulfill. And the inspired record of the 
initial and preparatory stages in the unfolding of 
o 209 



THE HIGHER CRITICISM CROSS-EXAMINED 

the divine purposes lost no whit of its value or its 
authority by the appearance of Him who was the 
sum and substance of its every message. On the 
contrary, its meaning was thereby enriched and 
expanded, its truths illumined and its problems 
solved, while its abiding authority was confirmed 
once for all by the seal of his express sanction and 
approval. It was, and had been from time imme- 
morial, accepted and reverenced as the divinely 
laid foundation upon which the Christian edifice 
was builded. 

If the critical estimate of the Old Testament is 
to prevail, can it any longer hold this, or any hon- 
orable position in the Christian system ? Can it 
be anything other than a source of weakness, cast- 
ing doubt upon the evidence of the divine origin 
of the Christian revelation, which evidence rested, 
in part at least, upon its fulfillment of the types 
and prophecies of the older Scriptures ? Would 
not the mere instinct of self-preservation prompt 
the complete severance of the Old from the New, 
so that the latter might stand on its own merits, 
unembarrassed by any vital connection with the 
fallible nature, the impaired authority, and the 
unfounded claims of the earlier record ? 

This severance is not, perhaps, imminent ; but 
it is approaching. As it is, the only idea of. con- 
tinuity involved in the critical concept seems to be 
that Christianity is an after-growth sprouting from 
210 



THE QUESTION OF MORALS 



the decayed stump of Judaism, rather than that 
both law and gospel are, from Sinai to Bethany, 
one growth of one stem from one root, a tree of 
God's own right hand planting, the leaves whereof 
are for the healing of the nations. But this latter 
view is one which, the critics tell us, is no longer 
" tenable in our days." x 

And no wonder. If the Old Testament is what 
they say it is ; compiled as they say it was ; written 
when and under the circumstances claimed by 
them, with the motives they attribute to its writers ; 
then, the sooner it is decanonized and forgotten, 
the better. 

If it were merely a matter of the perpetuation 
of honest tradition, however unverifiable or mis- 
taken it might be ; if the various provisions of the 
legislation were truly assigned to the period and 
source of their enactment, or left unassigned and 
so stated ; if the history consisted of bare histori- 
cal notes, fragmentary and incomplete, but faith- 
fully transcribed from authentic materials ; and if 
the prophetic oracles, anonymous or of known 
authorship, were simply collected and preserved 
without alteration, addition, or annexation, however 
chaotic they might be as to form or arrangement, 
the case would be vastly better than that made by 
the critics' showing. Although even then the re- 
sulting record would be an insecure foundation 

1 Kuenen, "Religion of Israel," Vol. I., p. 8. 

211 



THE HIGHER CRITICISM CROSS-EXAMINED 

upon which to base a system claiming to be of 
divine appointment. But when to all this uncer- 
tainty the element of designed deception is added, 
the case becomes desperate indeed. The inevitable 
outcome of the critical process is : 

1. That the record throughout is a deliberate 
and corrupt falsification of history, so that no man 
can take it upon its prima facie showing without 
being grossly misled. 

2. That the documentary evidence, where it has 
not been manufactured entire, has been subjected 
from time to time to interpolation and manipulation 
in the interests of succeeding sets of schemes and 
schemers. 

3. That the whole body of the nation's legisla- 
tion, social, economic, and religious, is falsely at- 
tributed to Moses, who is further made to commit 
the blasphemy of asserting that it is a direct rev- 
elation from God, thus involving the Almighty 
himself as a party to the fraud. 

4. That this fraud was carefully and deliberately 
worked out by the clique to whom its benefits and 
emoluments were to enure, conferring upon them 
the glory of descent from a man who never ex- 
isted, with the right of hereditary succession to an 
office he never held, and clothing them with author- 
ity to lay upon the people oppressive imposts and 
obligations never before heard of. 

Granting the critical premises, it would appear 
212 



THE QUESTION OF MORALS 



to be a hopeless undertaking successfully to defend 
the Deuteronomic and priestly writers and redac- 
tors from the charge of conscious, intentional, and 
corrupt fraud in foisting upon the people sham 
Mosaic legislation to their own advantage, and in 
perverting the facts of the history so as to furnish a 
plausible background and to give an air of credible 
antiquity to their revolutionary innovations. 

This question presents no embarrassing features 
to the German critics of the Wellhausen school. 
They content themselves with setting forth the 
methods of the biblical writers mentioned, without 
making any attempt to justify or extenuate them, or 
to relieve them of any odium which might possibly 
attach to such practices. For they are not con- 
cerned to find evidences of inspiration or any divine 
element at all in the Old Testament Scriptures. 

It is far otherwise with the " Christian scholars " 
in whose hands criticism " does not banish or de- 
stroy the inspiration " of that book, but rather 
" presupposes it." 1 For, although they are at 
agreement with their German brethren upon all 
points of cardinal importance involved in this phase 
of the critical theories, they shrink from applying 
the only logical conclusion possible in the premises. 
If the conduct of these biblical writers is as stated 
by both English and German critics, it richly de- 
serves all the scorn and contumely which the latter 

1 Driver, "Introduction," etc., p. xiii. 
213 



THE HIGHER CRITICISM CROSS-EXAMINED 

have heaped upon it. But the " Christian scholars " 
at least perceive the enormity of attributing to the 
Holy One of Israel the employment of such vicious 
media in the revelation of his truth to men. They, 
therefore, seek strenuously to evade the issue of 
moral obliquity which is inevitably raised. And 
they advance pleas in extenuation and justification 
which, in their way, are as extraordinary as the 
original charges which render them necessary. 

So, while Wellhausen contemptuously refers to 
the Chronicles as "a tainted whole," 1 Doctor 
Driver, at one with him in his estimate of the 
book, deprecates the idea that it was " the Chron- 
icler's intention to pervert the history." 2 Nowa- 
days, a man is presumed to intend the consequences 
of his acts — a presumption which is not only good 
law but good sense. Why it should have been 
otherwise in the Chronicler's times is not apparent. 

Wellhausen, again, speaking of the Pentateuch 
as completed by the addition of the priestly code, 
describes the cautious Ezra as withholding its pro- 
mulgation until the coming of an opportune time 
for the introduction of its radical innovations, 
which did not occur until fourteen years after his 
return to Jerusalem. 3 Driver, on the other hand, 
virtually denies that they were innovations, or that 

1 "Prolegomena," p. 224. 

2 Driver, " Introduction," p. 533. 

3 "Prolegomena," etc., p. 406. 

214 



THE QUESTION OF MORALS 



the priestly code was "manufactured" by the 
priests during the exile. 1 This statement is hard 
to reconcile with one made by him a few pages 
earlier, where he says, p. 136: " The pre-exilic 
period shows no indications of the legislation of 
that code as being in operation." This creates an 
odd quandary. The priestly code was not in 
operation before the exile, presumably, therefore, 
not in existence. It was not manufactured during 
the exile. It appears full-fledged and complete 
immediately after the exile. Where, when, and 
how did it originate ? The only alternative left 
open is manifestly that of spontaneous generation. 

The explanation attempted by Doctor Driver 
does not better the case, but rather accentuates 
the contradiction. Rebutting the imputation of 
" manufacture," he says at page 143 that in its 
main stock " it is based upon pre-existing temple 
usage." If this means anything it means that the 
substance of the legislation was in operation in 
the pre-exilic period. Which statement does he 
desire his readers to accept, that on page 136 or 
that on page 143 ? They cannot both be true. 

It is not easy to differentiate this treatment 
from mere literary thimblerigging. The evident 
design is to uphold the critical hypothesis of the 
Babylonian origin of the " priestly code," and at 
the same time relieve the captive scribes from 

1 "Introduction," p. 143. 

215 



THE HIGHER CRITICISM CROSS-EXAMINED 

the odium of having there "manufactured" it. 
How, upon that hypothesis, the regulations as to 
the wilderness sojourn, the directions as to the 
tabernacle, its furnishings and service and the con- 
stitution of the Aaronic order can be anything 
else than a fictitious creation of the exile, without 
a shadow of fact behind it, passes comprehension. 
Doctor Driver seeks to palliate the "free 
handling" of materials attributed to the biblical 
writers by invoking a so-called principle of inter- 
pretation to the effect that " some freedom was 
used by ancient historians in placing speeches or 
discourses in the mouths of historical characters." 1 
Kuenen, elaborating the same idea, says that "it 
may now be accepted as proved that the discourses 
and laws of Deuteronomy were put in the mouth of 
Moses " by an author of the seventh century who 
" has made Moses himself proclaim that which in 
his opinion it was expedient " should be then an- 
nounced and introduced. And he adds : "At a 
time when notions about literary property were yet 
in their infancy, an action of this kind was not 
regarded as at all unlawful. Men used to perpe- 
trate such fictions as these without any qualms of 
conscience"; 2 an excursus in casuistry which it 
would be hard to parallel, that is, if it is intended 
as a defense of the morality of the Deuteronomic 

1 "Introd. Pref.," p. xi., note. 

2 "Religion of Israel," Vol. II., p. 18 f. 

216 



THE QUESTION OF MORALS 



author's action. In like manner it might be said 
that at a time when Thuggee still flourished in 
Hindustan the worshipers of the goddess Kali did 
not regard the wholesale strangling of victims as 
at all unlawful, and were used to perpetrate such 
murders without any qualms of conscience. How- 
ever adequate this might be as an explanation of 
their attitude, it would certainly leave much to be 
desired as a justification of their morality. 

Some critics along the same lines point to the 
alleged impersonation of Solomon by the author of 
Ecclesiastes, and to the practice followed by Plu- 
tarch and others of putting speeches into the 
mouths of their characters as evidence of the uni- 
versal prevalence and the innocent intent of such a 
custom. But this is the veriest pretense at insti- 
tuting a valid parallel. The cases are not even 
similar, much less analogous. To make the par- 
allel at all warrantable these ancient historians 
would have to put into the mouths of their heroes 
not only speeches, but the promulgation of positive 
legislation whose charges and burdens it was their 
purpose to lay upon their countrymen, and of the 
avails of which they were themselves to be the 
beneficiaries. 

The biblical writers, moreover, are charged with 

attributing utterances not only to Moses and others, 

but also to the Almighty himself. Surely the 

critics in their attempts at justification draw the 

217 



THE HIGHER CRITICISM CROSS-EXAMINED 

line at that ? Apparently not. The practice, it is 
true, was not unknown in biblical times, but the 
ancient prophets were much more severe in their 
estimate of its moral quality and consequences than 
are the modern critics. The prophet Ezekiel says : 

They have seen vanity and lying divination, saying, The 
Lord saith : and the Lord hath not sent them ; and they have 
made others to hope that they would confirm the word. 
Have ye not seen a vain vision, and have ye not spoken a 
lying divination, whereas ye say, The Lord saith it ; albeit I 
have not spoken ? Therefore thus saith the Lord God, 
Because ye have spoken vanity, and seen lies, therefore, be- 
hold, I am against you, saith the Lord God. And mine 
hand shall be upon the prophets that see vanity, and that 
divine lies : they shall not be in the assembly of my people, 
neither shall they be written in the writing of the house of 
Israel, neither shall they enter into the land of Israel; and 
ye shall know that I am the Lord God (Ezek. 1 3 : 6-9). 

Which estimate does the Christian prefer, that of 
the Hebrew prophet or that of the higher critic ? 

Even if it were proven that such loose methods 
obtained and were universally followed in the 
ancient world, so that each writer regarded himself 
as having plenary license to change, augment, or 
diminish the biblical records at will to suit present 
purposes, which license he freely exercised, it is 
not seen how that would better the quality of the 
records themselves. It might acquit him of a 
consciously evil intent ; it must leave the writings 
ineradicably tainted with their original spuriousness 

218 



THE QUESTION OF MORALS 



and falsity and therefore impossible as a revelation 
of divine truth. 

The indications are, however, that the evidence 
of the prevalence of this low standard of literary 
morality exists only in the necessities of the critical 
theory. The author of Deuteronomy, at any rate, 
will have none of it, nor will he tolerate the 
thought that his words are to be at the mercy of 
every redactor whose "tendency" requires their 
modification or annulment. His strict and reiterated 
injunction is: " Ye shall not add unto the word 
which I command you, neither shall ye diminish 
aught from it, that ye may keep the command- 
ments of the Lord your God which I command 
you " (Deut. 4 : 2). If the critics are right as to 
the Deuteronomist's tampering with the earlier 
records, he must have been a singularly constituted 
person to imagine that the measure he had meted 
to his predecessors would not in turn be meted to 
him by those who followed after. 

At a much earlier period too, it appears that 
"notions about literary property" were by no 
means so inchoate as the critics represent. In the 
ancient code of Hammurabi that famous legislator 
concludes his work by calling down the condign 
vengeance of nineteen different gods and goddesses 
and groups of gods and goddesses on any one who 
shall " change his word, alter his bas-relief, destroy 
his written name and write his own name thereon, 
219 



THE HIGHER CRITICISM CROSS-EXAMINED 

or cause another to do so." l The rights of author- 
ship under modern copyright laws could hardly be 
more stringently safeguarded. 

On the whole, the case made by the critics for 
the mode of production, the laudable purpose, the 
innocent intent, and the intrinsic value of the rec- 
ords in question, is one which the ordinary man is 
likely to view with much suspicion. The facts seem 
to be against it ; it does not coincide with accepted 
views as to the constitution of the Oriental mind 
in its superstitious reverence for the thing written ; 
it is expressly negatived by the concededly rigid 
immobility of the Jewish character, and its intense 
conservatism and loyalty to ancient standards. It 
is utterly opposed even to the most rudimen- 
tary conceptions of honesty and veracity — qualities 
which, at bottom, are surely not affected either by 
longitude or the calendar. 

This subject has received very gingerly treat- 
ment at the hands of the critics and their adher- 
ents. It is rarely brought into first prominence 
or fully considered in all its bearings. As a rule, 
its seamy side is kept sedulously in the back- 
ground, and its difficulties are sought to be met 
and overcome by the statement that they are 
referable to the human element which all must ad- 
mit is present in the Scriptures. Human element, 

1 Pinches, "The Old Testament and the Historical Records 
of Assyria," etc., p. 517. 

220 



THE QUESTION OF MORALS 



yes ! But criminal element ? A thousand times, 
no ! A record which even lays itself open to the 
charge of fraud, impersonation, and false pretenses, 
as we understand those terms, can never be finally 
accepted by sober Christian thought as the conduit 
through which God conveys his truth to men. 

The moral issue cannot be evaded. It will not 
down, but will insistently urge a solution conso- 
nant, at least, with elementary notions of right and 
wrong, of truth and falsity. All that the critics 
have hitherto done in this direction is to present 
explanations which are evasions, to offer excuses 
which are accusations, to postulate ideas the 
prevalence of which they have not proved, and to 
assume customs the existence of which is more 
than dubious. The excuses are an insult to com- 
mon sense ; the pleas in justification are an outrage 
upon common decency. 



221 



XVI 

THE PRACTICAL OUTCOME 



We have to look facts in the face. Men may make what 
private exceptions from their own theory they please; what 
we have to do with is this view of the formation of Scrip- 
ture, in its principles and implications. And facing that, 
we have no scruples in saying that if we accept the con- 
clusions of criticism then we have no longer an authorita- 
tive revelation. Our warrant for going to the whole world 
and offering pardon and renewal and eternal life on the 
ground of a divine covenant promise, foreshadowed in the 
Old Testament and revealed in the New, is taken away. 
The Bible is no longer the solitary, immediate unveiling of 
God, discovering a purpose, founding a kingdom in which 
humanity should reach its goal, and the meaning and end 
of all existence should stand clear. Judaism and Chris- 
tianity have their true place among the ethnic religions, if 
on that level they are the best. j ^ n Smtffc 



Other knowledge I disdain, 

' Tis all but vanity. 
Christ the Lamb of God was slain, 

He tasted death for me. 
Me to save from endless woe, 

The sin-atoning victim died ; 
Only Jesus will I know, 

And Jesus crucified. 

— Charles Wesley. 



XVI 

THE PRACTICAL OUTCOME 

Behold, the word of the Lord is unto them a reproach ; 
they have no delight in it. —Jeremiah. 

It is now about a generation since the various 
branches of the evangelical church in English- 
speaking countries began to be subjected to the 
influences of the higher criticism. For the past 
ten years that influence may be said to have 
been a dominant force, modifying, if not absolutely 
negativing, old forms of belief ; necessitating the 
restatement of nearly every one of the cardinal 
doctrines of Christianity in such wise as to present 
them in aspects fundamentally different from all 
previous conceptions and formulations thereof ; 
shifting the points of emphasis and the seat and 
ground of authority in matters of faith ; tending 
increasingly toward a rationalistic basis and the 
elimination of the supernatural ; molding and 
coloring the utterances of classroom, press, and 
pulpit ; and so impressing its ideals and tenden- 
cies upon the whole congregation of Christian 
people as to force upon the least observant among 
them the consciousness of a radical change in the 
p 225 



THE HIGHER CRITICISM CROSS-EXAMINED 

spiritual atmosphere and life of the church, its 
attitude toward doctrinal standards, its conceptions 
of the conditions of experimental religion, and its 
relations to the outside world. It is, perhaps, not 
too soon to inquire whether, on the whole, these 
influences have been wholesome or harmful. 

On the scholastic side of this subject the writer 
has and claims no qualifications to speak. A vast 
impetus has doubtless been imparted to the study 
of ancient Hebrew and cognate branches of learn- 
ing ; much exegetical skill and acumen developed ; 
a large fund of curious information and some mis- 
information accumulated; the "historical setting" 
of many passages projected with great ability and 
some plausibility ; and world-wide reputations for 
indefatigable industry, patient research, profound 
erudition, and brilliant system-building deservedly 
achieved. 

But in his conception of the essential nature of 
vital godliness and its divinely laid avenues of ap- 
proach, the importance of that aspect of the ques- 
tion has been greatly overrated. It is quite pos- 
sible that the advantages acquired may have been 
purchased at too high a price ; and that the re- 
sultant apotheosis of learning — a mere by-product, 
perhaps, of the higher criticism — may involve 
grievous disloyalty to Christ. Many devout Chris- 
tians of the old-fashioned sort, forming not the 
least valuable constituents of the membership of 
226 



THE PRACTICAL OUTCOME 



the organized church to-day, gravely doubt whether 
criticism, with all its achievements, has thrown one 
scintilla of light upon the spiritual content of 
biblical truth ; and they more than doubt whether 
any of its discoveries, or all of them put together, 
have ever been influential in bringing one unbe- 
lieving heart to a saving knowledge of the truth as 
it is in Jesus. They, rather, incline to the opinion 
that through its pursuit, and through the attempted 
philosophies and sciences of religion of which it 
has been the moving cause, the cross of Christ is 
made of none effect. They conceive, indeed, that 
the revelation of God in Christ Jesus, with all its 
antecedent stages and all its subsequent issues, is 
neither a science nor a philosophy ; that it cannot 
be confined within the limits of a philosophical 
system ; and that its principles are not amenable 
to scientific or philosophical processes, being, like 
all transcendental facts, insusceptible of final and 
complete analysis. They, therefore, are strongly 
of the conviction that criticism, science, and 
philosophy, as elements of primary importance in 
the inception, growth, and nurture of the Chris- 
tian life, may safely be ignored, or at least that 
intellectual apprehension with all its incentives to 
human arrogance and pride ought of right to yield 
place to that nobler faculty by which divine truths 
are "spiritually discerned." * 

1 Robertson, "Early Religion of Israel," Pref. 
227 



THE HIGHER CRITICISM CROSS-EXAMINED 

They repudiate the notion that the eternal pur. 
pose of mercy and grace which God has pictured 
in his dealings with his ancient people and illu- 
minated by the revelation of the gospel of his Son, 
must be seen through scholastic spectacles and 
the refractions of a university atmosphere before 
its true perspective can be perceived and its essen- 
tial significance grasped by the millions to whom 
its messages of life are primarily addressed. They 
cannot entertain the thought that the sincere milk 
of the word must be strained through academic 
colanders before it is digestible by the class who 
in the days of our Saviour's flesh "heard him 
gladly." 

And they would protest against the incipient 
recrudescence of the exclusive caste spirit, which 
is of the very essence of sacerdotalism, with its 
necessity for a professorial intermediary between 
the individual soul and its reception and assimila- 
tion of the truths of God, as vigorously as did 
their forefathers against the monstrous pretension 
that salvation was not of free grace and not to be 
obtained except by dropping good guilders into the 
proper institutional coffers. 

They readily admit the legitimacy of the ancil- 
lary relations of learning and scholarship, but they 
are as prompt to resent any attempt on the part of 
those handmaids to usurp the position of mistress 
of the household of faith. "Thirdly, teachers," 
228 



THE PRACTICAL OUTCOME 



is Paul's assignment of relative priority ; and they 
would not willingly see these " ten thousand in- 
structors in Christ " wrongfully elevated to the 
topmost seat. 

The educational ideals of the day, and their 
overshadowing influence upon modern methods in 
Christian work they deprecate, as involving the 
vicious assumption that there is in human nature 
every element necessary to enable men to accom- 
plish their own salvation, needing only the agen- 
cies of the classroom applied by properly certified 
tutors to bring it out. If, indeed, the inception 
and development of the Christian life depended 
upon correct mental operations, and were con- 
terminous with or to be admeasured by the breadth 
and vividness of our intellectual apprehensions ; 
then the pursuit of critical methods with all their 
correlatives and implications would not only be 
commendable in our leaders of Christian thought — 
they would be an imperative necessity for all. 
And this curious result would follow : The wise 
and the learned would partake of its gifts to the 
full, while the common people, the poor and the 
illiterate, would be turned empty away. 

They believe that the precise contrary is the 
fact, and that through the gift and calling of God 
the Bushman with his vocabulary of three hundred 
monosyllables may as truly know and as effectually 
testify to the life-giving power of the engrafted 
229 



THE HIGHER CRITICISM CROSS-EXAMINED 

word as the decipherer of cuneiform inscriptions 
who can see in the God-given laws of Sinai only 
mutilated fragments of a forgotten and resuscitated 
Babylonian code. 

In their view, the very highest type of Christian 
character, replete with every grace and abounding 
in all spiritual wisdom and endowment is possible 
of attainment, wholly irrespective either of the 
possession or the lack of education, so that one 
who never heard of the inductive method or of a 
logical process, may nevertheless be so deeply 
versed in the mysteries of the kingdom, and so 
fitted to impart spiritual gifts to others, as to be a 
duly commissioned ambassador of Christ, and a 
divinely directed teacher of the righteousness 
which is by faith. 

Their conviction is that the most potent hin- 
drance to the spread of Christianity and to the 
maintenance of a high quality of spiritual life in 
the church is not to be found in human ignorance 
of the elements of Christian truth, but rather in 
the obduracy of the human will and the alienation 
of the human heart ; in the rebellion, in short, of 
fallen human nature against the sovereignty and 
governance of God. And to overcome these re- 
sistive forces a mightier sword is needed than was 
ever forged in any collegiate workshop, or borne 
by any university don, how great soever may be 
the skill with which he handles the weapons of his 
230 



THE PRACTICAL OUTCOME 



craft. The sword of the Spirit, which is the word 
of God, will alone avail here ; and the efficiency 
of that instrument the critics are industriously 
seeking to impair, if not destroy. 

Habits of accurate thinking, the polish of cul- 
ture, the graces of form, the sense of proportion, 
the amenities and the refinements of life, may be, 
and doubtless are, acquired through the discipline 
of the schools ; but life itself, spiritual, divine, can 
only be imparted by the Spirit of God, pictured in 
old time by Jehovah's prophet as breathing over 
the dry bones in the Valley of Vision. And this 
is an agency which the high priests of modern 
Christian culture, in act if not in word, have suf- 
fered to sink into desuetude ; if, indeed, they have 
not discredited it altogether as the refuge of the 
unbalanced and the fanatic. 

But Christians of the type mentioned steadfastly 
maintain the older conceptions of the office and 
work of the Holy Spirit in their most explicit form ; 
to wit, that men may, and actually do, receive the 
direct light and leading of the Spirit in answer to 
sincere and believing prayer ; that without his aid, 
humbly depended on and devoutly sought, the 
truths of holy writ are a sealed word, and will 
not yield up their secrets to the profoundest in- 
sight or the most penetrating analysis ; and that 
any method or system, whether sacerdotal or 
scholastic, which even looks toward independence 
231 



THE HIGHER CRITICISM CROSS-EXAMINED 

of this agency, or tends to the deposition of the 
Holy Spirit from his paramount place as Inter- 
preter of the mind of God as set forth in the writ- 
ten word, or seeks through any other avenue than 
his convicting and converting power to bring men 
into the kingdom of Christ is a distinct and un- 
equivocal departure from the faith once delivered 
unto the saints. 

This departure they regard as having already 
taken place ; and in their estimate the conditions 
existing in the visible church of to-day tend 
strongly to confirm that view. They refuse to be 
deceived by surface indications of prosperity. They 
are not impressed by the multiform activities of 
the church along social and economic lines, with 
its numberless societies and organizations. They 
regard the endless succession of church clubs and 
schools, reading clubs, debating clubs, dramatic 
clubs, athletic clubs, schools of social and domes- 
tic science, of industrial training, of civic study, 
and of secular education generally, as but sorry 
makeshifts for a lost gospel and a vanished 
power. In their view these institutions, some of 
them praiseworthy in the highest degree, belong 
primarily to the secular order ; and the greatest 
measure of success in achievement along those 
lines may be, and very likely will be, coincident 
with spiritual barrenness and destitution of the 
most pronounced type. They conceive that the 
232 



THE PRACTICAL OUTCOME 



mission of the church of the living God is other 
and higher than the improvement of material con- 
ditions or the amelioration of the social order ; and 
that the divine ideal and aim is in imminent dan- 
ger of being swamped and lost sight of in the 
multitude of worldly activities to which it has lent 
itself. And they look upon the erection of costly 
church edifices with elaborate "plants," apparently 
on the department store plan, and the contribution 
of vast aggregations of wealth devoted to the 
carrying out of this varied programme, as but the 
tithings of mint, anise, and cummin, to the neglect 
of the weightier matters of the law. 

For, side by side with all this show of bustle 
and activity — much of it mere empty dress parade, 
and most of it wholly irrelevant to the distinctive 
duty of spreading the gospel of our Lord Jesus 
Christ — they note ever-increasing symptoms of a 
widespread and deep-seated spiritual declension. 
We seem, for example, to have reached an absolute 
halt in the matter of the numerical increase of the 
church. Population is mounting up by leaps and 
bounds, and we are standing still, if not actually 
going behind. The fathers are dying out, and the 
children are not taking their places ! And this, 
not because the standard of admission has been 
raised and the conditions of membership made 
more stringent ; for the direct contrary is the 
truth. To-day little more is required than a bare 

233 



THE HIGHER CRITICISM CROSS-EXAMINED 

willingness to "join the church," and in many 
cases even that is secured by attractions and in- 
ducements strikingly resembling the "gift enter- 
prises " with which wide-awake shopkeepers tempt 
customers to their stores. 

There is manifest, moreover, a lamentable fall- 
ing away in the matter of the observance of pub- 
lic worship. Christians go to or stay away from 
the services of the sanctuary for much the same 
reasons which prompt men in going to or staying 
away from the theatre or the lyceum — the weather, 
the attractiveness of the programme, personal incli- 
nations, and the like. Once the believer did not 
regard himself as having any choice in the matter ; 
it was his duty to go, and if he neglected this duty, 
his conscience accused him of withholding due 
homage from his God. To-day he goes if he feels 
like it ; and as often as not he does not feel like 
it. And if this is so with the believing units, what 
of the unbelieving masses ? As we know, they 
simply will not go, and nothing in the way of sen- 
sational theme, or operatic performance, or magic- 
lantern show, will tempt them there. As they 
bluntly put it, they have no use for the church. 

And with all this there is present to-day an all- 
pervading spirit of skepticism such as can find no 
parallel in all the ages of Christian history. There 
have been skeptics and skeptical periods before, 
but their manifestation has been largely confined 

234 



THE PRACTICAL OUTCOME 



to avowed enemies of all revealed religion, leaving 
the great body of the church untouched. Now 
they are entrenched in the very citadel of faith, 
and its bitterest foes are they of its own household. 
As has been seen, criticism, keen, mordant, hostile, 
emanating from so-called leaders of religious 
thought, is seeking to sap the foundations of every 
distinctive doctrine of the Christian creed, to 
eliminate every vestige of the supernatural from 
the Christian records, to reduce the authentic re- 
mains of Christ's life and words to a few moral 
precepts, and to depend for the growth and perpe- 
tuity of the influence of Christianity over men upon 
the operation of what is at best an unverified and 
unverifiable working hypothesis which concededly 
fails to account for all the facts, but which they 
elevate to the highest rank, as a power holding 
exclusive sway over the whole realm of phenomena ; 
a law embracing in its scope matter, mind, morals, 
and religion ; a master-key to unlock all mysteries 
of life and being ; and a universal solvent of every 
problem that can arise in the heavens above and 
the earth beneath and the waters under the earth ; 
and which they apotheosize under the name of the 
law of evolution. 

Can it be wondered at, under such circum- 
stances, that our churches are honeycombed 
through and through with uncertainty and doubt, 
and have consequently drifted into such a stagnant 

235 



THE HIGHER CRITICISM CROSS-EXAMINED 

backwater of indifference that the eclipse of faith 
among us has ceased to be a matter of general 
concern ? Materialism of the worst sort, i. e., the 
practical, is rampant ; things seen and temporal 
loom so largely and desirably, and things unseen 
and eternal seem so far off and so dubious, that 
for all practical purposes the motto of to-day is : 
"Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die." 
And these are not mere isolated symptoms, but 
are so general as to stamp their features upon 
the time in which we live and to characterize it as 
pre-eminently the age of unbelief. 

Some may question whether the condition of 
impotence into which the church of Christ has 
fallen to-day is fairly chargeable to the influence 
of the higher criticism, and the consequences 
which have followed in its train. In the writer's 
judgment, and he by no means stands alone in 
this opinion, there is little doubt of it. They 
seem well calculated to produce just such effects, 
and no reason appears that what is a sufficient is 
not also the efficient cause. 

Two facts lend support to this view : one is neg- 
lect of the Bible itself ; the other is disregard of 
biblical teaching. 

The astounding ignorance, even among Christian 

people, of the contents of the Bible, as compared 

with the intimate familiarity with it which obtained 

only a generation since, is so patent as to be no- 

236 



THE PRACTICAL OUTCOME 



torious. But why should we greatly wonder at it ? 
Why should they concern themselves about the 
matter, so long as they are in doubt whether it is 
merely the literature of the ancient Hebrews, or 
the law of the living God that they are called upon 
to read ? Who can blame them for suspending 
interest until the critics decide which part is the 
word of God and which is not ? And this ques- 
tion is one which, Professor Briggs tells us, the 
higher criticism can never determine. 1 

Nor is the modern disregard of biblical teach- 
ing on all great fundamental questions any less 
marked. Take, for instance, the change in the 
attitude of the religious world of to-day toward 
scriptural declarations as to sin, its consequences, 
and its remedy. There was a time within the 
memory of the living when the evangelical church 
was a substantial unit in recognizing sin as a deadly 
and a damning fact in universal human history, 
underlying and coloring all our conceptions as to 
the nature and destiny of man. It was regarded 
as infinitely hateful to God, and as meriting and 
entailing the profoundest depths of the divine dis- 
pleasure and the stern infliction of the divine judg- 
ment. It was an evil so inveterate and desperate 
that to save men from its dominion and its doom 
God spared not his own Son, but freely delivered him 
up for us all. And with these tremendous truths 

1 Briggs, "Biblical Study," p. 220. 
237 



THE HIGHER CRITICISM CROSS-EXAMINED 

before them, ministers of the word shunned not 
to declare unto men the whole counsel of God, 
depicting in no uncertain terms the warnings of 
holy writ as to the doom of the impenitent, and 
with strong pleadings and tears exhorting sinners 
to flee from the wrath to come. 

Now when we inquire into modern views upon 
those fundamental questions, we become conscious 
of a change so vast as to be startling. "This 
difference," says Dale of Birmingham, in a sermon 
on the forgiveness of sins, " is so great, it affects 
so seriously the whole system of the religious 
thought and life, that we seem to have invented a 
new religion." And this is notably true of the 
utterances of the advance guard of the new the- 
ology, who seem determined, as before stated, to 
fit Christianity into some niche of the Spencerian 
system, and to restate the gospel in terms, and 
only in terms, of the evolutionary theory ; accord- 
ing to which sin is transmuted into a mere defect 
in the adjustment of the organism to its environ- 
ment. And this same philosophy, by the agency 
of its twin demi-gods heredity and environment, 
reduces man's accountability for sin to an insig- 
nificant minimum ; the impact of the iron hand of 
circumstance upon inherited qualities and tenden- 
cies amounting almost to absolute determinism, so 
that under its pressure the free will of man dwin- 
dles into the shadow of a shade. 
238 



THF PRACTICAL OUTCOME 



This conception granted there does not seem to 
be any room for the belief that God has any strong 
resentment against sin, or against those who are 
guilty of it. And since his resentment is gone, 
his mercy goes with it, the forgiveness of sin fades 
into an idle phrase, and the humiliation, agony, 
and death of the Lord Jesus become a wanton 
infliction of useless suffering, an irrelevant inter- 
vention, thrusting itself without cause or purpose 
into the mechanism of the orderly processes of 
evolution by law. Truly, whatever else this so- 
called Christian philosophy may or may not have 
achieved, it has robbed the crucifixion of all mean- 
ing, and the atonement of all power. 

These views prevailing, and it is not to be de- 
nied that they are on the increase, it is the veriest 
juggling with words to contend that of the gospel 
as set forth in the New Testament, and as con- 
ceived in every age of the church save the present, 
one shred or vestige remains. Sooner or later too, 
the common sense of the common people will de- 
tect the void behind the mask ; and they can never 
permanently content themselves with a vacuity. 



239 



XVII 
CHRIST VERSUS CRITICISM 



The Old Testament canon is accredited by an authority of 
which the New Testament is devoid. This is the authority 
of Jesus Christ himsetf —George Adam Smith. 



No theory can possibly be true which conflicts with the 
direct teaching of Christ This may seem to some a very 
needless truism; unfortunately, it is a very necessary re- 
minder. We are prepared as Christian men to receive and 
welcome the fullest light of the new learning. We are not 
prepared to be dragged at the wheels of those who would 
give us a discredited Old Testament, an emasculated New 
Testament, a fallible Christ Robert Sinker. 



XVII 

CHRIST VERSUS CRITICISM 

Had ye believed Moses, ye would have believed me ; 
for he wrote of me. But if ye believe not his writings, how 
shall ye believe my words ? —Jesus. 

By far the gravest of all the issues presented by 
the higher criticism is that which springs out of 
the relation which it purports to establish between 
our divine Lord and the Old Testament Scriptures. 
If the Lord Jesus is right in his estimate of those 
writings, then the critics are not only wrong but 
slanderously and traitorously wrong in that they 
impugn either his wisdom or his veracity and 
utterly set at naught his authority to the extent 
even of denying to his words the slightest weight 
as testimony. If, on the other hand, the critics 
are right, our Saviour is — what ? 

This is a question which the Christian can by 
no means afford to leave unanswered. Nor can 
he be content with an answer which is an evasion 
or which fails at any point fully and squarely to 
meet the issue raised, for it is a matter of supreme 
importance and one which goes to the heart of 
things. It is well that he should have clearly in 

243 



THE HIGHER CRITICISM CROSS-EXAMINED 

mind the precise use that our Lord made of those 
Scriptures and the authority he accorded to them. 
He will then be in a position to judge whether the 
divine authentication and the critical condemna- 
tion of the Old Testament are not so utterly at 
variance as to be mutually destructive, so that he 
who holds the one cannot possibly accept the other. 
He may, perhaps, if he is given to the propounding 
of unprofitable questions resting in wiredrawn and 
casuistical distinctions, go further and ask whether 
any of the solutions offered by the " Christian 
critics " is sufficient to form a common ground 
whereon these opposing conceptions may meet and 
harmonize without derogation of the claims of our 
Saviour as to his person and his mission. 

Our Lord, for instance, treats as historical facts 
the Noachian deluge with the saving of Noah and 
his house, the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah 
with the narrow escape of Lot therefrom, the ap- 
pearance of Jehovah to Moses in the burning bush, 
the giving of the manna and the lifting up of the 
brazen serpent in the wilderness, recognizing too 
in the last event a prophecy of the manner and 
of the saving purpose of his own death. The 
critics say that these incidents are, one and all, 
unhistorical, being mere blends of myth and second- 
hand traditions, worked over again and again, with 
no trace of discoverable evidence behind them. 

He repeatedly speaks of Abraham as a real per- 
244 



CHRIST VERSUS CRITICISM 



son, the generic head of Israel, on one occasion in 
such a way as manifestly to point to the promise 
that " in him should all the families of the earth 
be blessed." The critics dispose of Abraham as 
a lunar hero, "the free creation of unconscious 
art," a fictitious character, belief in whose actuality 
had not, even in the days of Amos, reached the 
same stage as that regarding Isaac and Jacob, one 
critic, it is true, admitting a mysterious "critical 
reaction in favor of recognizing " his personality. 

Our Lord authenticates the accounts of the 
miraculous preservation of the widow of Zarephath 
and her son, and of the cleansing of Naaman, the 
Syrian leper. To the critics they are but the 
"anecdotic chaff" with which the really valuable 
historical notes in the books of Kings are largely 
mixed ; unhistorical traditions of "curious marvels" 
current in prophetic circles in the 9-8 century b. c. 

He apparently treats the journey and mission 
of the prophet Jonah to the Ninevites as sober 
history, founding upon the facts of that history a 
rebuke to his hearers for their unbelief and finding 
in its strangest incident a prophecy in act of his 
own death, burial, and resurrection. To the critics 
it is not history at all nor was ever intended as 
such, being a mere post-exilic parable or allegory, 
borrowing some of its features from a Babylonian 
dragon myth. 1 The critic cited piously asks, 

1 Smith, "Book of the Twelve," Vol. II., p. 524. 
245 



THE HIGHER CRITICISM CROSS-EXAMINED 

" How long, O Lord, must thy poetry suffer from 
those who can only treat it as prose ? " He goes 
on to insist that there is no attempt made to " re- 
cord an historical conversion of this vast heathen 
city." Christ says that the men of Nineveh "re- 
pented at the preaching of Jonah." The two 
statements may be left to stand side by side. 

In his great forecast of the signs of his coming 
and of the end of the world he expressly quotes 
and applies a prediction of the prophet Daniel, men- 
tioning him by name. Criticism decides that there 
was no prophet Daniel nor were any prophecies 
uttered by him, and that the book in which they 
purport to be recorded is a religious romance of 
the days of Antiochus Epiphanes. 

With respect to the attitude of our Lord toward 
the Old Testament Scriptures generally, it would 
seem to be needless to multiply instances. At 
large and in detail, by words as clear and unam- 
biguous as language affords, he pays the fullest 
tribute to their genuineness and authenticity, their 
absolute truth, their abiding authority, and their 
divine origin. Repeatedly he assigns the author- 
ship of the Pentateuch to Moses, whose legislative 
enactments he in turn identifies with "the com- 
mandments of God." In his mysterious tempta- 
tion in the wilderness the only answers he vouch- 
safes to the tempter's pleas are quotations from 
the book of Deuteronomy. Of the law of Moses 
246 



CHRIST VERSUS CRITICISM 



he says : " Till heaven and earth pass away, one 
jot or one tittle shall in nowise pass from the law 
till all be fulfilled." Again and again he asserts 
that these Scriptures prophesied of him, saying of 
them: "They are they which testify of me." 
Upon them, in part at least, he bases his Messianic 
claims, and to them he appeals as grounds for 
belief in him as the Christ of God. 

Can the issue between the Lord Jesus Christ 
and the higher critics be more sharply drawn ? 
Who is in the right and whose words are to be 
believed ? Is it possible for the Christian to concur 
in the verdict of the critics without rejecting the 
testimony of the Lord that bought him ? 

That the antagonism suggested in fact exists is 
not denied, nor is there any ground on which such 
a denial could possibly rest. To the devout Chris- 
tian this creates a startling situation. He has ever 
regarded his Master's slightest word as of the 
essence of the truth, as possessing supreme au- 
thority and as commanding his instant and un- 
questioning belief. He is now told that it is not 
only permissible, but requisite to a right under- 
standing of the subject that he should reject that 
word on matters vitally affecting his Lord's au- 
thority as a teacher and his claims to divine Son- 
ship, and that he must accept in place thereof 
dicta which have formed the stock in trade of 
every enemy of revealed religion from the time of 
247 



THE HIGHER CRITICISM CROSS-EXAMINED 

Porphyry onward. The Christian may well ask : 
Where is this process to stop, and at what stage 
may I be certified that the teachings of Christ 
are infallible and to be implicitly followed ? If he 
was in error as to the past, what assurance have I 
that he was not also in error as to the future ? If 
wrong in one point, why not in all ? 

It will not do to say that his utterances as to 
the nature and integrity of the Scriptures are 
negligible and unauthoritative, but that his decla- 
rations regarding himself and his relations to the 
Father and to the believer are matters of faith to 
be received and obeyed by all who would become 
his disciples. For these two elements overlap, 
and are indeed so closely interwoven that they 
cannot be separated without the impairment of 
both. Our Lord too makes no such distinction. 
On the contrary, he continually finds in the one 
prophecy and proof of the truth of his statements 
as to the other. Nor does he entertain the delu- 
sion that those who deny the one may be expected 
to accept the other. He says : " We speak that 
we do know, and ye receive not our testimony. 
If I tell you earthly things, and ye believe not, 
how shall ye believe when I tell you of heavenly 
things?" 

The suggestion is an intolerable one in any case, 
as an attempt to parallel the situation in actual 
life will show. A project is brought forward by 
248 



CHRIST VERSUS CRITICISM 



one who seeks to procure its general acceptance 
and to persuade men to pledge their action in aid 
of its execution. To effectuate his purpose and 
to secure the necessary co-operation he makes a 
series of representations. The truth or falsity of 
certain of these representations it is within their 
power to some extent to test by evidence. As to 
the residue no such possibility exists ; it must be 
left to stand on the bare word of the promoter of 
the undertaking. On examination, they discover 
that as to the matters within their cognizance he 
is not to be trusted. Either he is wholly mistaken 
himself or he has knowingly misled them. But 
notwithstanding this impeachment of his credi- 
bility, he still claims their confidence as to the 
matters which are concededly beyond the range of 
their knowledge. On such a showing, how many 
followers would he enlist among prudent men, 
particularly if any important personal interests, 
financial or otherwise, were involved ? And yet 
this is the position to which the critical theories 
reduce the several aspects of our Saviour's 
teachings. 

Two pleas in avoidance are advanced : One is 
the theory of accommodation ; the other that of 
the kenosis. But the attempts thereby made to 
hide the sinister significance of the " assured 
results of criticism ■" are evidently mere counsels 
of desperation. They impale the Christian upon 
249 



THE HIGHER CRITICISM CROSS-EXAMINED 



the horns of an unthinkable dilemma ; the one 
impugns our Lord's sincerity, the other his infalli- 
bility. As to the first, its bare statement ought 
to condemn it. It is that he merely conformed 
to the common usage of the Jews without in- 
tending thereby to indorse their opinions, accom- 
modating himself to the ignorance of his hearers 
and accepting current Jewish notions as to the 
Old Testament out of deference to prejudices 
which might otherwise be a bar to their accept- 
ance of his message. Our Lord a trimmer ? Set- 
ting his sails to the favoring breezes of popular 
favor ? How exceedingly false and calumnious. 
Right in the teeth of the wind of their doctrines 
he held his course. Most emphatically it is not 
true that he accepted Jewish notions regarding 
the Scriptures. The Jews of his time held them, 
as overlaid, controlled, and even reversed by the 
traditions of the fathers — traditions which, then 
and thereafter, were reverenced by the Jews as 
possessing an authority equal, and in some cases 
superior, to that of the Old Testament writings 
themselves. 

Not in one recorded instance did he fail to run 
counter to their prejudices on this subject. On 
the contrary, he sternly exposed and as sternly 
rebuked them, saying on one occasion, "Thus have 
ye made the commandment of God of none effect 
by your tradition." Indeed, his ministry was one 
250 



CHRIST VERSUS CRITICISM 



long protest against " current Jewish notions," and 
his consistent opposition thereto was one of the 
moving causes which, humanly speaking, brought 
him to his death. With respect, moreover, to 
their true significance, the attitude of our Lord 
and that of the scribes and Pharisees toward these 
Scriptures were antipodal — in harmony at no 
one point, as his repeated denunciations of their 
perversions thereof abundantly illustrate. 

But the excuse is an impossible one in any view. 
The idea that He who was "the Truth" could 
knowingly build upon a false foundation is one 
which no Christian ought for a moment to be able 
even to contemplate without abhorrence. 

Nor is the theory of the kenosis any more satis- 
factory. On that head the claim is made that our 
Lord himself did not know by whom the Penta- 
teuch was written, since he "habitually spoke in 
his incarnate life on earth under the limitations of 
a properly human consciousness." l The one direct 
affirmation upon which this claim rests is, of 
course, the oft-quoted phrase in Paul's Epistle to 
the Philippians in which our Lord is described as 
"emptying himself" (Phil. 2 : 7), although support 
is sought in other scripture to which reference 
will be made. 

It is a frequent taunt of the new theologians 

1 Gore, "Bampton Lectures" for 1891, p. 199, quoted by 
Canon Rawlinson in "Lex Mosaica" p. 46. 



251 



THE HIGHER CRITICISM CROSS-EXAMINED 

of the critical wing, that " traditionalists," in viola- 
tion of the principles of true perspective in the- 
ology, are given to the founding of important doc- 
trines on isolated passages, as e. g., the doctrine of 
chiliasm upon the twentieth chapter of the book 
of Revelation. But here the critics presume to 
dogmatize upon the profoundest mystery of the 
Christian faith — the union of the divine and human 
natures in the Lord Jesus — on the authority, not 
of an isolated passage, but of an isolated word in a 
single member of a passage, the preceding and fol- 
lowing members of which passage characterize, ex- 
plain, and limit the phrase in question, not only 
specifying the particulars in which this " self -empty- 
ing" was manifested, but also indicating the ethical 
lessons to enforce which was the apparent inten- 
tion of the apostle's words. And full effect may 
be given to them all without resort to the gratu- 
itous injection of an alien element which is in 
direct conflict with the plain showing of the gospel 
narrative on this very point. 

If the violent divorcing of this one word from 
its explanatory context, and the baseless expan- 
sion of its meaning so as to cover a far wider area, 
do not constitute a flagrant infraction of the true 
rule of interpretation, which demands that all the 
clauses of a complex statement shall be read to- 
gether and each part be construed as restricted and 
governed by the general tenor of the whole, then 
252 



CHRIST VERSUS CRITICISM 



it is difficult to see how such an offense could be 
committed. 

In the face, however, of the many recorded in- 
stances directly and by implication attributing to 
our Lord supernatural knowledge, the meaning 
and scope of this one word is so magnified as to 
deny to him any knowledge, or any source of 
knowledge, save that which he possessed in com- 
mon with other good men. And all this in the 
name of scientific exegesis. It is the abnegation 
of common sense and reduces interpretation to an 
absurdity. So far as its destructive effect on any 
real belief in the proper divinity of Christ is con- 
cerned, the most radical Unitarian could ask for 
no stancher advocacy of his position. 

To go no further, the eschatology of the twenty- 
fourth and twenty-fifth chapters of Matthew, with 
its categorical statements as to the second coming 
and the last judgment, and its definite assignment 
of precise circumstance and order of event, is a 
complete refutation of the kenotic theory. The very 
passage in that discourse, on which the critics rely 
as distinctly and unmistakably indicating the human 
limits of our Lord's knowledge, points decisively 
in an opposite direction. The passage is : " Of that 
day and hour knoweth no man, no not the angels 
which are in heaven, neither the Son, but the 
Father." What man, "speaking under the limita- 
tions of a properly human consciousness," would 

253 



THE HIGHER CRITICISM CROSS-EXAMINED 

dare presume to say what knowledge was or was 
not possessed by the angels which are in heaven, 
standing in the immediate presence of God himself? 
The only way whereby this dishonoring theory 
can be maintained is to subject the Gospels to the 
treatment accorded to the Law and the Prophets. 
There are indications not a few that the critics are 
prepared to do even this, the result being, as well 
stated by Dr. John Smith, of Edinburgh, that "we 
have no longer an authoritative revelation, and our 
warrant for going to the world and offering pardon 
and renewal and eternal life on the ground of a divine 
covenant promise, foreshadowed in the Old Testa- 
ment and revealed in the New, is taken away." * 

It is for the Christian (and it is to him, simply 
as such, that this appeal is addressed, and to none 
other) to say whether upon the whole case the 
force of the evidence adduced in support of the 
critical position is so overwhelming as to compel 
him to accept its conclusions. This will in some 
measure depend upon the value at which he ap- 
praises the revelation of God in Christ Jesus, 
whereof the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures 
afford the only authentic record. If it is to him 
the pearl of great price much more will be needed 
to induce its surrender than the mass of assump- 
tions and conjectures on which the critical edifice 

1 John Smith, "Integrity of Scripture," p. 30. 
254 



CHRIST VERSUS CRITICISM 



is builded. If he holds it lightly, as a thing of little 
worth, but slight considerations will avail to form 
his excuse for an indifference which is in itself a 
negation. In the latter case the end of the pro- 
cess is not uncertain. There are half-way houses, 
but he cannot abide in them. By sheer momen- 
tum he will be borne inexorably onward and down- 
ward until he is brought to a standstill by the dead 
wall of naturalism, compelling him to relegate the 
Scriptures to their place among the literatures of 
the earth and to rank his Redeemer with the great 
teachers of antiquity, if, indeed, he is not banished 
from the realm of actuality altogether, as a mere 
culture hero. 

If he must indeed travel this path the brave 
part would be for him to face the inevitable boldly 
and without delay, and with a sad farewell to a 
lost gospel, a buried Christ, an unknowable God, 
and a vanished hope, to embrace unaffectedly 
what Thomas Carlyle called "the gospel of dirt 
and everything from frogspawn," recognizing in 
the postulated lumps of protoplasm his ultimate 
ancestors, and bowing down to and worshiping the 
primeval fire-mist, the fount and origin of things, 
the creator and maker of us all, behind which 
there is — nothing. 



255 



GENERAL INDEX 



Aaron, a fictitious person, 127. 

Abraham: Wellhausen's opinion 
regarding, 67; a Scotch critic's 
view of, 68; his rescue of Lot, 
185, 186 ; Christ versus critics on 
disposal of, 244, 245. 

Alford, Dean, on Christ's place in 
the Scriptures, 53. 

Amos : developed higher concep- 
tions of God, 73 ; gives prophet- 
ical evidence of Mosaic law, 147. 

Anderson, Sir Robert: on Bible 
criticism, 27 ; quoted, 92. 

Archaeologists, authorship of Pen- 
tateuch and, 180. 

Archaeology : some demonstrations 
of, 180; genuineness of Genesis 
fourteen and, 187, 188. 

Argument from non-observance 
a pillar foundation of higher 
criticism, 167; a poor foundation, 
170-175. 

Argument from silence : worthless- 
ness of, 155, 156 ; Professor Briggs 
on, 157; Prof. Robertson Smith 
attaches importance to, 157 ; Pro- 
fessor Kuenen's novel use of, 157, 
158 ; indispensable to critics, 159, 
160 ; opportunities for, suggested 
by Professor Margoliouth, 161. 

Arguments, pro and con, 137. 

Babylonian inscriptions : their tes- 
timony to the flood, 196 ; discredit 
critics' scheme regarding Penta- 
teuch, 196 ; compared with Egyp- 
tian, 197. 

Bible : its authority attacked, 13 ; 
assaulted by skeptics and Chris- 



tian critics, 14, 19; position of 
pundits on, 25; Eichhorn's ef- 
forts to eliminate supernatural 
from, 31; study of , as literature, 
33-35 ; attitude of Christian of 
old-fashioned type toward the, 
49-51 ; inspiration of, 49, 50 ; mu- 
tilated by critics, 86; critics 
should compile a new, 89 ; neg- 
lect of, 236 ; disregard of teach- 
ings of, 237. 

Briggs, Professor, on argument 
from silence, 157. 

Brugsch, Doctor, on Egyptian in- 
scriptions relating to life of 
Joseph, 199, 200. 

Cairene Ecclesiasticus, Professor 
Margoliouth on, 108. 

Campbell, Lord Chancellor, on sci- 
entific witnesses, 95, 96. 

Cheyne, Professor, on date of 
Psalter, 161, 162. 

Christ : at variance with critics, 
243-247 ; and historical facts, 245, 
246 ; his attitude toward Old Tes- 
tament Scriptures generally, 246, 
247 ; and Jewish notions regard- 
ing Scriptures, 250. 

Christian of the old-fashioned 
type: attitude of, toward the 
Book, 49; inspiration of Scrip- 
tures sufficient for, 49, 50; and 
study of Bible, 50; his knowl- 
edge of the Bible, 51 ; the Scrip- 
tures are a testimony to, 53, 54 ; 
critical methods of to-day and, 
55 ; his reverential habit, 55, 56 ; 
an eager student of prophetic 



257 



GENERAL INDEX 



word, 56, 57; would be chided 
by " Christian critic " of to-day, 
57, 58 ; his conception of preach- 
ing, 59 ; welcomed learning and 
genius, 60 ; his regimen, 60, 61 ; 
his sole weapon in Christian 
warfare, 61, 230, 231 ; his doubts 
and opinions regarding higher 
criticism, 227, 228; his concep- 
tions of Holy Spirit's office, 231, 
232 ; and church to-day, 232, 233. 

Christianity : present type of, and 
past contrasted, 45, 46; in the 
critical concept, 210, 211. 

Christian revelation : attacked by 
higher criticism, 13 ; as held by 
old-fashioned type of Christian, 
44 ; Bible inspired and infallible 
record of, 59; result of critical 
estimate of Old Testament on, 
210; scholastic spectacles not 
needed to discern, 228. 

Christians : higher criticism and, 
13 ; thinking on higher criti- 
cism, 20; a settled conviction 
and query of many, 20, 21 ; rights 
and interests of, in the contro- 
versy on higher criticism, 26 ; 
their heritage, 26 ; firm beliefs in 
the earlier days of devout, 39-45 ; 
should admit nothing but actual 
proof, 94 ; higher criticism a sub- 
ject of momentous import to, 94 ; 
their startling situation, 247. 

Chronicles, "atainted whole," 214. 

Church : and higher criticism, 13 ; 
possesses an antiseptic, 15, 16; 
an easy prey if spiritually de- 
cadent, 15, 16; influenced by 
higher criticism, 225, 226; exist- 
ing conditions in, of to-day, 232 ; 
spiritual declension in, 233 ; its 
condition of impotence due to 
higher criticism, 236. 

Colenso, on priestly code, 130. 

Critic : unfortunate selection of 
word, 28, 29; its primary and 
secondary meanings, 29, 30; as 



faultfinder, 30; the assumption 
of the, 32; as witness, judge, 
jury, sheriff, 32, 33. 

Critics: their possible claim, 14, 
15 ; would chide Christian of old- 
fashioned type, 57; their opin- 
ions on origins, 66, 67; their 
history of the patriarchs, 67-69 ; 
their obliteration of Bible, 79; 
their boast of success, 89 ; condi- 
tions confronting, in contrast, 
98 ; undismayed, 100 ; on priestly 
code, 100, 101 ; on sources in Pen- 
tateuch, 102 ; adepts at game of 
"follow my leader," 103; deter- 
mining authorship, 133; histor- 
ical evidence and, 121 ; their il- 
logical attitude, 130 ; minimize 
effect of adverse texts, 150 ; and 
passage in Hosea, 150, 151 ; argu- 
ment from silence and, 159 ; au- 
thorship of Pentateuch and their 
opinion of, 180; and literary 
character of Mosaic age, 182, 183 ; 
their case for mode of produc- 
tion, etc., of biblical records, 
220 ; their law of evolution, 235 ; 
at variance with Christ's teach- 
ing, 244-246. 

Critics, English, contrasted with 
German, 87, 88. 

Critics, German, contrasted with 
English, 87, 88 ; no embarrassing 
features presented to, 213. 

Critical methods: and Christian 
of old-fashioned type, 55; illus- 
tration of internal evidence ac- 
cording to. 110; illustration of 
historical evidence according to, 
131-133 ; inherent vice of, 155 ; 
inevitable outcome of, 212. 

Daniel, book of, a religious novel, 

86. 
Denny, Professor, on origin of 

human race, 66. 
Deuteronomy: fashioned out of 

whole cloth, 82, 83; forged in 



•58 



GENERAL INDEX 



reign of Josiah, 160 ; its silence 
on important points, 160; Kue- 
nen on laws of, 216. 

Dillmann : a renowned critic, 131 ; 
quoted, 194. 

Doublets: basis of modern criti- 
cism in Old Testament, 115; 
an instance of, 115, 116 ; support 
historical evidence, 124, 183, 184 ; 
Prof. G. A. Smith on presence of, 
183, 184 ; noted in Deuteronomy 
and Leviticus by Canon Driver, 
148 ; names of authors of, 184 ; 
Prof. Robertson Smith on, 184. 

Driver, Canon : his minute literary 
analysis of Old Testament, 112 ; 
his " Introduction to the Litera- 
ture of the Old Testament," 121, 
122; disagrees with Professor 
Smith, 122 ; his references to 
"priestly usage," 146 ; on vow of 
Nazarite, 146; on Genesis four- 
teen, 189 ; on narratives in gen- 
eral, 201; on date of priestly 
code, 215 ; on freedom of biblical 
writers, 216-218. 

Ebers, Dr. Georg, on conditions 
of ancient Egypt, 197. 

Egypt : policy of, 204 ; changes in 
national life of, 204. 205. 

Egyptian inscriptions: compared 
with Babylonian, 197 ; their tes- 
timony to patriarchal and Mo- 
saic narratives, 197; confirm 
scriptural account of Egyptian 
life. 197. 

Eichhorn: originator of phrase, 
" higher criticism," 31. 

Elijah : wiped out by M. Vernes, 
88 ; age of, not literary, 182. 

Elisha : wiped out by M. Vernes, 
88 ; age of, non-literary, 182. 

Evidence : should be first-class, 93 ; 
precarious character of, 107 ; of 
divine origin of Christian reve- 
lation, 210. 

Evidence, external : lack of, 94, 



195; a result of, 195, 196; in 
Egyptian and Babylonian in- 
scriptions, contrasted, 197. 

Evidence, historical : main con- 
clusions of critics based upon, 
121; versus literary analysis, 
121, 122 ; supported by existence 
of "doublets," 124; method of 
handling, 126 ; a legal illustra- 
tion of, 131-133 ; of Mosaic legis- 
lation, 147. 

Evidence, internal : critical theory 
depends entirely on, 95 ; known 
as expert testimony, 95; its 
sphere, 95, 96 ; its usefulness con- 
ditioned, 96, 97; a notable in- 
stance of, 97, 98; drawn from 
books of Moses, 100 ; sponsor for 
various theories, 107, 108 ; illus- 
trations of the futility of, 109- 
111 ; critics' reliance upon, 195. 

Exodus, book of, mutilated by 
critics, 81, 82 

Faith, Christian: wounded in 
house of friends, 14, 15 ; and re- 
vival of 1857, 16; in spiritually 
healthy church, 16 ; result of 
unsettling, 18. 

Flood, The : Prof. Robertson Smith 
on, 184 ; Professor Sayce on Bab- 
ylonian account of, 184; Prof. 
G. A. Smith on Babylonian ac- 
count of, 185 ; external evidences 
regarding, 196. 

French, Valpy, in " Lex Mosaica" 
on historical evidences, 126. 

Genesis, book of : and critics, 80 ; 
" doublets " in, 124; critics and 
fourteenth chapter of, 186, 187 ; 
archaeology and fourteenth 
chapter of, 187,188 ; Canon Driver 
on fourteenth chapter of, 189; 
Prof. G. A. Smith on, 190 ; ques- 
tion at issue in, 191; Professor 
Smith and late origin of, 205, 
206. 



259 



GENERAL INDEX 



Hebrew: only adepts in, should 
be heard, 25; lack of knowl- 
edge of, 99; Doctor French on 
ancient, 113; vast impetus im- 
parted to study of, 226. 

Higher criticism: attitude of 
church toward, 13 ; astonishing 
vogue of, 15; exponents and 
champions of, 17; cause and 
effect of condition resulting 
from, 17 ; inalienable rights of 
Christians to participate in con- 
troversy on, 26 ; now in the open, 
27 ; a progressive and evolution- 
ary science, 87 ; its history and 
evidence, 107; various theories 
of, 107; argument from non- 
observance and, 167; a late 
phase of, 167; inevitable out- 
come of, 212, 213 ; influence of, 
225 ; its gravest issue, 243. 

Historical books of Bible, are not 
historical but devotional, 83, 84. 

Hommell, Professor, on fourteenth 
chapter of Genesis, 187. 

Hosea : developed higher concep- 
tions of God, 73; critics' treat- 
ment of passage in, 150, 151. 

Human race: a brand new his- 
tory of, 65 ; the Bible's account 
of origin of, 65 ; Professor Denny 
on origin of, 66 ; Christian critics' 
opinion of origin of, 66. 

Israel: Professor Robertson's brief 
summary of history of, 40, 41; 
critics' view of religion of, 70-72 ; 
a nation of borrowers, 72 ; de- 
velopment of religion of, 73-75 ; 
their system of laws, 74; Canon 
Driver's supposition regarding, 
141 ; disregarded Mosaic institu- 
tions, 168; inveterate idolaters, 



Johnson, Doctor, on importance 
of average man in Bible criti- 
cism, 27. 



Joseph: Dr. Georg Ebers on his- 
tory of, 197 ; Mr. John Urquhait 
on history of, 198, 199 ; Egyptian 
atmosphere of story of, 198. 

Josiah, Deuteronomy forged dur- 
ing reign of, 160. 

Judah, disregarded Mosaic insti- 
tutions, 168, 169. 

Judges, book of, Wellhausen's 
opinion on, 125. 

Kenosis, Theory of : its claim, 251, 
253; a complete refutation of 
the, 253. 

Kuenen, Professor : quoted, 24 ; on 
polytheism of Israelites, 70 ; his 
novel use of argument from 
silence, 158, 159. 

Kings, Book of, Wellhausen's 
opinion of, 125. 

Leathes, Prof. Stanley: quoted, 

106; and "The Law and the 

Prophets," 139. 
Leviticus, Book of, deliberately 

fabricated, 83. 
Lias, Chancellor: on inaccuracy 

of the Scriptures, 36 ; quoted, 38. 
Literary analysis: by Canon 

Driver, 112; versus historical 

evidence, 121, 122. 

Margoliouth, Professor: on Cairene 
Ecclesiasticus, 108 ; on argument 
from silence, 155, 156; suggests 
opportunities for use of argu- 
ment from silence, 161. 

Mosaic law: prophets and pre- 
existence of. 140; prophet and 
historian wrote in view of, 147 ; 
Amos finds evidence of, 147; 
post-exilic, 168 ; disregarded by 
Israel and Judah, 168, 169. 

Moses: existence of, conceded, 
69 ; as lawgiver, a myth, 70, 81 ; 
wiped out by M. Vernes, 69, 87, 
88; internal evidence drawn 
from books of, 100; history of 



260 



GENERAL INDEX 



Israel and law of, 167 ; Christ's 
words on law of, 247. 
Mosaic age: germs of conscious- 
ness of God present in, 69, 70; 
critics and literary character of, 
182, 183. 

Nazarite, law of the, 146, 147. 

Observations, preliminary, 28-36. 

Patriarchs : Christian critics' view 
of the, 68 ; their religion, 68, 69. 

Pentateuch : priestly code latest 
portion of, 100; number of 
sources in, 102 ; Professor Smith 
on agreement of critics regard- 
ing sources in, 102 ; Prof. Stanley 
Leathes and significant and dis- 
tinctive phrases used in, 139, 
145 ; assumptions regarding, 142, 
143 ; legislation of, incorporated 
with historical narrative, 145 ; 
authorship of, not confirmed by 
archaeologists, 180; Wellhausen 
on date of priestly code of, 214 ; 
its authorship assigned to Moses 
by Christ, 247. 

Priestly code : latest portion of 
Pentateuch, 100; tabernacle an 
invention of forgers of, 126, 127 ; 
Shiloh culminating fraud of, 
128; Wellhausen's disposal of, 
129; prescriptions of, 146, 147; 
Wellhausen and Driver on date 
of, 214, 215; Babylonian origin 
of. 215. 

Prophecy : Christ's place in, 42-44 ; 
Christ the fulfillment of all, 53 ; 
old-fashioned type of Christian 
an eager student of, 56-59. 

Prophets, Books of the: collec- 
tions of anonymous oracles, 85 ; 
their practical use, 86 ; saturated 
in language of law, 138 ; repeti- 
tion of pentateuchal phrases in, 
139, 145. 

Psalms, Book of: hymnal of the 



second temple, 84; ancient or 
modern according to critics' 
needs, 85. 

Rawlinson, Canon, on Egyptian 
life in eighteenth and nine- 
teenth dynasties, 204, 205. 

Religion, Christian critics' view of 
origin of, 67. 

Revival of 1857, Christian faith at 
time of, 16. 

Robertson, Prof. James: and his- 
tory of Israel, 40, 41 ; quoted, 120, 
136 ; illogical attitude of critics 
shown by, 130, 131. 

Samson, as a Nazarite, 147, 148. 

Samuel, wiped out by M. Yernes, 
88. 

Samuel, Book of: entrance to 
" real and indubitable history," 
125; Wellhausen's opinion on, 
125. 

Sayce, Professor : on limited field 
of analysts, 112 ; his " Monument 
Facts and Higher Critical Fan- 
cies " commended, 181; age of 
Moses a literary age shown by, 
181, 182 ; on Babylonian account 
of flood, 185 ; quoted, 178, 193. 

Scott, Archibald, quoted, 64. 

Sinai, Mount, an Oriental Olym- 
pus, 71. 

Sinker, Robert, quoted, 242. 

Smith, Prof. George Adam: on 
critics and the Pentateuch, 102 ; 
on historical evidence, 121 ; dis- 
agrees with Canon Driver, 122 ; 
on Babylonian study of the 
flood, 185 ; on Genesis fourteen, 
190; on history of Joseph and 
Egyptian life, 202 ; on Egyptian 
names in Genesis, 205, 206; 
quoted, 242. 

Smith, John, quoted, 224. 

Smith, Robertson: quoted, 24; on 
two passages in book of Psalms, 
84, 85. 



26l 



GENERAL INDEX 



Suppositions, regarding 
teuch, 142, 143, 145. 



Penta- 



Tabernacle : as precursor of tem- 
ple, 126; direct evidence of es- 
tablishment of, 127 ; critics dis- 
pose of evidence of, 128-130. 

Testament, New : foundations of, 
not affected by discrediting Old 
Testament, 18, 19 ; its indissolu- 
ble union with Old Testament, 
209 ; its severance from Old Tes- 
tament not imminent, 210 ; crit- 
ics obliterate gospel of, 239. 

Testament, Old: suggestion of a 
canon of Church of England re- 
garding, 59 ; inspiration of, " pre- 
supposed," 35, 36 ; M.Vernes' sup- 
position of date of writings, law, 
etc., of, 88; critics' boast of suc- 
cessful assault on, 89 ; should be 
withdrawn from circulation by 
critics, 90; Canon Driver's lit- 
erary analysis of, 112; "doub- 
lets" basis of modern criticism 
on, 115 ; criticism of, mainly his- 
torical, 121 ; its position in Chris- 
tian scheme, 209, 210 ; Christian 
revelation weakened by critical 
estimate of, 210; indissoluble 
union of, with New Testament, 
211 ; critical condemnation of, 
at variance. with divine authen- 
tication, 244 ; Christ's treatment 
of historical facts of, 244. 

Theory of accommodation, con- 
demned, 250. 

Theory, Kenotic. See Kenosis. 

"Theory, Traditional": an un- 
warranted phrase, 89; gravamen 
of, 167. 



Thomas, John, quoted, 208. 

Tracy Peerage Case, Lord Chan- 
cellor Campbell on expert wit- 
ness in, 95, 96. 

Urquhart, John, on life of Joseph 
198, 199. 

Van Dyke, Henry, quoted, 166. 

Van Orelli, Professor, expresses 
astonishment regarding dom- 
inant theory, 103. 

Vernes, M. Maurice: discredits 
Moses, 69, 88 ; wipes out proph- 
ets, 88; his supposition of Old 
Testament writings, 88. 

Wace, Henry, quoted, 208. 

Watson, Doctor, in ''Lex Mosaica' 
on phrase "The author knows 
nothing," 156, 157. 

Watts, Robert, quoted, 78. 

Wellhausen: his view of Abra- 
ham, 67 ; on Moses and Israel- 
ites' conception of God, 70 ; on 
Judges, Samuel, and Kings, 125 ; 
quoted, 136; on testimonies of 
prophets to pre-existence of the 
Mosaic law, 140, 141 ; on useful- 
ness of argument from silence, 
159; on giving of the law upon 
Sinai, 175; on date of priestly 
code, 214. 

Wesley, Charles, poems by, 12, 38, 
48, 224. 

Wharton, Doctor, on results of 
"probable proof," 102. 

Witnesses, Scientific, Lord Chan- 
cellor Campbell on, 95, 96. 

Worship, Public, falling away in 
matter of observance of, 234. 



262 



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